"By Heaven, woman!" Lady Ci scolded her magistrate. "Thy countenance does appear as if thou had taken a demon for a bedfellow!"

In truth, Hui's face had fared far worse than any joke on the governor's part could possibly hope to even describe, much less assuage. Her skin had become cracked and sickly pale, a nearly constant panicked glaze stuck to a ghastly green. Failing to declare sartorial surrender, she still buried herself under fine copper-meshed lattice dresses and billowing, ivory chiffon out of habit even as the filth of the anarchic colony had soiled its hem, her unending stress had yellowed the armpits in sweat, and the jade log buttons of the suit tangled in a knotty, unkempt mess. It was not merely her fall from grace but Hui's hopeless clinging to the decaying memory of that former glory that exuded nothing but tragedy.

"No," the magistrate replied, "but without you, we did take a demon for a governor."

Xiao knew it was not, could not be genuine, knew it had to be the opium - those occasional drips and puffs which had been of late turning to rivers and clouds – but she felt a sort of happiness anyway, an ephemeral phantom wisp of happiness, just long enough to smile at the joke. Then, she sighed, and with just the most delicate edges of her fingertips she stroked her servant's sunken cheek and whispered.

"I know, Hui." She averted her gaze, drifting her touch to the woman's collar just as she understood how profoundly she had overstepped in their professional relationship. "We know all, and we empathize. But thou still have thy duty. Cover it up. Paint over the blemishes."

Hui's mouth contorted in exasperation. "How... how could you possibly care about something like that in such a time as th-."

Ci extracted her hand from the magistrate's body with a crisp, disciplined motion – no easy feat when her arms were draped down in three feet of violently red-dyed silk forming enormous sleeves. With proper poise, however, the fabric could lend the appearance of a wings gliding through the corridors, and poise was precisely what the governor possessed.

"Conceal it," she repeated, though this time her voice was devoid entirely of any sentiment or sympathy whatsoever. It was a voice so pedagogical, so commanding, it had no bandwidth left to spare for anything as trifling as human feeling. "Do thou remember what we told thee, so very long ago, when thou had passed thy final examination back in our glorious, eternal capital? Do thou still recall our words as we spoke them then?"

A hint, a small, almost insignificant but entirely unmistakable shimmer of a smile twitched in Hui's mouth as she saw that familiar spark of life flash again in her master's eye. "Yes, of course."

The governor crossed her arms, her white powdered face standing stoically still despite the long strands of ebony bolted by white gold chains to her earlobes, weighing her head down. She was entirely unabashed, "well, what was it?"

Hui shook her head, chuckling through her annoyance. "'The Literati are immortal, and that is exactly what they must appear to always be.'"

Ci nodded, satisfied, "and a woman literata doubly so."

The magistrate laughed, remembering, "and then you tossed me a purse full of taels – more money than I ever seen in my life – and told me to buy a new set of clothes."

"And if we had known thou would appear with us before the traitor Pan wearing ... that," Xiao gestured towards the woman's sorry state of dress, "we would have lent thee ten times the amount."

Lady Ci left her subordinate as she always tried to leave everyone: entirely stupefied and unable even to fathom a response. Instead, with her arms stretched, she took flight, rushing towards the footmen standing guard at Quentin's office in the military palace and flinging the paper panels open before they had even had the chance to announce her.

The long, arduous weeks between the spy, Ethel having delivered Xiao the EAGLE, then sending her coded message through the Legion transmitter and awaiting a response had been some of the painful of the lady's existence. There was so much to potentially go wrong and so few avenues left open to correct the errors.

First, the spy could have easily betrayed her. Ethel could have realized the EAGLE's value and sold it for every ounce of silver on this whole, forsaken planet. Even after she had miraculously returned, codebook intact, she could have been easily apprehended while sending the governor's message. The military palace had the only transmitter capable of sending and receiving interstellar signals in the northern continent, and had it not been for the sheer level of anarchy gripping the colony, even the thought of accessing it would have been pure fantasy.

The next part, as much as it would have pained the governor to admit, had been nothing more than luck. Ci's demand for reinforcements had been sent to the Imperial Joint Chiefs, the Home Empire's central Legion command, and though it had been urgent and distressing, given the governor's own faltering political fortunes back on the Home worlds, it could easily have been ignored. As well, if the IJC had chosen to respond directly, it would have replied to the military palace, immediately alerting Pan and no one else.

Heaven had smiled upon her, though, for not only had there been a trade delegation in the Cassian system to relay the IJC's message, it had been dispatched by a friend and acquaintance of the Lady Ci herself: a prefect now turned Praetor from her time as Chief of Defence Staff on Cassia Prime, Zheng He. After making contact with him, Pan's governor-generalship had officially come to a conclusion, and the best, most delectable part was, since the treacherous leach had undoubtedly been listening in on Ci's correspondence the whole time, she knew it just as well.

Perhaps that was why now, even as she was still shoveling a plate of pork dumplings into her mouth, chewing just into the meaty centres before spitting out the half-eaten doughy shell onto her plate like a child, the centurion turned governor-general Pan Quentin did not even move to bar Ci Xiao from her chambers. She knew, or at the very least, she had come to understand, that the chamber was no longer even hers at all.

This is, of course, was what the governor hoped, if for nothing else but to remove the disgustingly unmatched red curtain that now sliced through the once imposing salon and rendered it, just like nearly everything else in the colony under Pan's leadership, a miserable shell of its former self. Perhaps Hui had been right before at hinting at her superficiality, she thought, and as satisfying as it was in her mind to picture it, the lady knew it would take a great deal that simple redecoration to rectify this lunatic's aberrations.

Yet there was something still surreptitiously sinister in the casual manner with which that woman, that fearsome spectre of darkness received Ci who would both precede and succeed her. Not once did her face betray a single modicum of defeat. Instead, she focussed entirely on the meal before her, not delaying a single bite until the governor finally interrupted her.

"Centurion," Xiao began, explicitly ignoring Pan's newer, fabricated titles, "although we have been informed thou fulfilled thy duties to the utmost in this most trying of times, we are sorry to announce that we are returning to our role as governor of the province of Septimi effective immediately, and relieving thee to civilian life. Unfortunately, in absolutely no conceivable way attributable to thee, rogue Legion officers placed us under house-arrest, forcing us to resign and appoint thee in our stead. Having since liberated ourselves, however, our resignation has been rescinded – something of which we have already informed the Praetor Zheng as his fleet nears orbit."

Lady Ci made special effort to emphasize that last point, and it was, at last, met with the deposed colonial leader raising her head, sticky black sauces smeared across her once-again widening face as she faced her rival directly.

"I am well aware of thy correspondence, little sister," the centurion began, degrading the governor as effectively as her depressed position could afford her. "I have been reading every word you two passed – or tried to pass – between one another for more than a week now."

With some notable strain, she pushed herself up from the desk and began hobbling about the outlines of the room, stalking the governor from a safe distance, but still readying herself to pounce at any moment.

"I have been also, I must say," Quentin continued almost absent-mindedly, as if she were talking to herself, "quite dismayed by the horrendous fantasies from which thou suffer, evidenced not only by the incredulous, lurid details thou have attempted to send Praetor Zheng so far, but as also by the remarkable tale thou just summoned the courage to conjure up for me. The Legion forcing thee to sign away thy freedoms? What a lark is this! Messages of mass murder, riots, battles, rapes! By the will of Heaven, it is too fanciful to believe! If anything, this is only further proof of the degraded stature of thy mind, further confirmation that I am needed right here, exactly where I stand: governor-general of the His Majesty the Emperor's imperial colony."

"So, no, Lady Ci, there will be no return to civilian life for me. Thy suggestion has been taking under advisement." She rushed forward, for moment seeming like she would almost charge the governor head-on, stopping just shy of the rattled lady's face. "Consider it rejected."

Ci curled her hands into fists, furious beyond compare. "Can thou not see, thou foul? We are offering an alternative, a steppingstone, a white flag, a backdoor from which to retreat and avoid further bloodshed. Zheng has heard our message, and we are off to visit him - and his Legions - today. Surrender, allow Magistrate Hui to regain the colony, and thou and thy Black Hundreds can live another day in peace. Refuse, and we shall return with enough soldiers to avenge the lives of every single innocent man, woman and child thou murdered to the greatest prejudice our wicked heart will allow."

Quentin was unphased. She seemed almost to laugh off the threat as she replied, "Xiao, Xiao, Xiao. Please, my dear. Why the intimidation? Why the anger? Thou truly do remind me of my father, he who, in his last, dying days, saw his brain addled just like thine to such insufferable senility, accusing even those who love him most of such heinous, despicable crimes. Even to this very day, I am left bewildered as to how his mind could ever have imagined such things. It truly is a terrible sight to behold – in both of you."

She frowned. "Far from dreading thy voyage to the Praetor, I welcome it! Hopefully there, on Zheng's flagship and surrounded by his officers, some sense can be worked into thee. I have also been in contact with Mister Zheng thou see, and unlike thyself, thou who had to highjack my equipment to send but one measly message to our masters, I have been utilizing my array to contact each and every one of Zheng's senior commanders individually, telling them the whole story, making very clear just lost and disturbed thou truly are. So, leave; there is thy invitation. Summon thy army of apparitions to best me, if even in thy senescent mind alone. While thou chase thy fantasies in the stars, I shall remain here, on Earth, at work in the dirt."

"So be it!" Ci snarled, turning her back on the irritant, and motioning for Hui to leave, but Pan gestured them to stay just a little longer.

"Please," she implored, "my pet is a little hungry. Let me feed it before you leave."

She snapped, and two pale-faced Cassian slave boys slid aside the auspicious curtain that had divided the room ever since Lady Ci stepped in. The two had belonged to Ci before her removal from office, and from the way they bent their heads, their shadows barely able to conceal the multitude of purple rings and electrical bruises that marked their powdered skin, it was clear their new owner had developed something of a penchant for mistreating them. Just one more set of victims to whom she would have to make amends.

For what laid behind that curtain, however, there would be no hope of amending.

There, caged in an open air, four metre square metal bin, was the remnants of a human man. His arms and legs had each been torn off and cauterized with a soldering gun. His eyes and tongue were gouged out, the holes seething with foaming, swelling infected abscess. His hide hung ragged and unfed on the pointy hooks of his skeleton, his body nearly as light and hollow as a bird from starvation. He flopped aimlessly on his writhing stomach, caked entirely in the deathly fragrant layer of his own detritus. With undisguised delight, Pan scraped her half-eaten dumplings straight off the plate on the man's head, howling in laughter as he tried to roll himself about, desperately, feverishly mouthing at the floor for only a small morsel of subsistence.

"Eat up little piggy!" the woman taunted, smashing the empty plate against the wall only to startle the blinded invalid even further. She then turned back to her guests behind, shivering and trembling as they now were.

"Oh, what surprise thou feign! How genius the performance!" She laughed. "For a moment that nearly had me fooled. But, of course, I was wise to thee. Of course, you recognize this ... this thing. Of course, you do! This is the spy thou sent to me. This is the man who sent thy message. This is the turncoat whose life was worth ohhhhh so much less than thine."

She walked up very close to both ladies, her breath overwhelming even the smell of the putrid feces and other vile odours emanating from the pen. "And this is how you will both see your ends if either of you says even one more word of thy fantasies to the Praetor further."

It was a threat that chilled her, even now, as the governor boarded her private ship for the voyage back to space. That man, that eviscerated husk of a man, had not been the spy, of course. That was Ethel, and she, for the moment, was still quite safe, still quite unsuspected deep within Pan's own staff. Far from comforting her, though, it only worried the governor more.

If Quentin was capable of enacting such suffering upon an innocent, what woe might she have planned for those who had truly betrayed her?

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After having been subjected to nothing but total darkness for so long, even the most minute of intrusions could scar all the way to the very back of Alfred's light-deprived retinas. And this was far from the most minute of intrusions.

The torturer had been so careful, so exceedingly precise in how she had unsealed the dungeon in the past, never for even a moment allowing even the slightest sliver of light to escape, that when she threw the door open now, the movement could not possibly have been explained by anything as pedestrian as carelessness. Instead, despite the pain and difficulty in just keeping his eyes open, Alfred could see nothing but desperation smeared all about her.

"Time to fly, old friend," she mumbled to herself, her words a barely audible struggle against windless, heavy breathing that seemed to be overtaking her. She rushed to the motor on the wall, overtaxing the choking, spattering engine to its maximum speed as it lowered Alfred's chains down the wall until his weakened, shriveled legs could crumble to the ground. He was too diminished now even to stand without the cruel assistance of the chains; his feet had forgotten entirely what it meant to walk.

The torturer paid the rumpled, arguably anthropomorphic mass little mind. Instead, she quickly, methodically loosened and unlocked each of the metal bracelets at Alfred's ankles and wrists, applying a stinging solution from a cotton swab onto the puffing, purple greenish residue the iron had left behind on his bloodied, brutalized flesh.

"What trickery is this?" Alfred asked, not daring to rub his aching wrists for fear of what retaliation was undoubtedly awaiting him.

"We're ... leaving," the torturer responded, her tone as flat and unemotional as she always was in his presence, but with an unmistakable worried pause in her breathing. If this was an act, it was something far beyond the skill Alfred had ever seen her display. Though, then again, the torments had started becoming too orthodox, too predictable, even prosaic these recent days – for torturer and tortured alike. It was hardly impossible that she could be motivated to innovate out of sheer boredom if nothing else.

Alfred pushed himself as much as he could into the cold, metal wall behind him, crying, "I shall go nowhere with thee!"

The torturer did even seem to hear him, however. Some sound or flash of light had alerted her, and she hurried back to the entrance, leaning her ear into the hallway as she held herself balanced on the doorframe. Her face scrunched in frenzied concentration – attempted concentration – but she was too nervous, too anxious, and every sensation and stimulation was racing to her head all too intensely and too fast to focus. She scurried back to her victim, still pressed firmly against the wall, trying with all his might to protect himself from her.

"Can thou walk?" she asked.

"I..." Alfred did not know how to answer. Should he project strength to protect himself, or would she interpret any show of a force as a challenge? Was it only a question to prompt a beating until such inquiries of his walking were far beyond asking? Then again, could he possibly afford risking a display of fearfulness, decrepitude, weakness? Would that trigger some form of sympathy, of care and compassion that might still be locked far away in the deepest reaches of her icy heart, or would it only beckon her further, encourage her, show how easy he was to exploit, to attack, to torture at her mercy?

"I ... don't know," he replied. The pressure was too much, the angst too palpable. This waiting, this uncertainty, this inescapable dread was infinitely worse than any agony she could ever inflict upon him. Unable to hold a single cogent thought in his head, he resorted to sobbing. "I do not know!"

A sudden, frenetic energy seemed to overtake the torturer as her arms plunged to Alfred's shoulders, his body repulsing instinctively as she held him firmly, her eyes staring intently into his own. "Yes, thou do know, Alfred. Thou do! I know it may not be the same for you Vidar Cassians, but we in the Party, we true Cassians in the Party, we love our torturers, Alfred. We need our torturers. It is our pain that compels us, our grief that unifies us, our anguish that uncovers our true, wretched selves and improves them."

"Thou know thou are strong, Alfred, for I know it. I know it, I said! That is all the torture is, all it ever is. A lesson, Alfred. Thou must believe. It has a purpose. It is not just cruelty. It is a necessity. It's didactic. It teaches one so much, so many things that can only ever be experienced but through the application of tremendous pain, through the making of real choices with real consequences. Thou can walk, Alfred! If thou can withstand the worst I have done to thee, thou can walk. It is all a matter of will and withstanding."

"We can escape together, thou and I. Like a mother training thee to use thy feet, I have coddled and prepared thee, but now, the test is upon us. The home is too small, and the outside too enticing. We must leave this nest together, Alfred, for we will surely die if we do not. My comrades – our comrades – they'll be dead soon. Killed by firing squad, if not already, and I will be next once they find me. Thou are my last comrade now, Alfred. My one and only friend. I cannot leave thee, Alfred, not when I have done so much, when we have taught each other so more than we could ever learn on our own. Come, escape, run with me and enjoy the strength I have so gifted thee!"

The torturer's heart was beating so fast, Alfred could feel it through the palms of her hands as they squeezed into him, her eyes only growing larger and more intent with every word she spoke. Fear had gripped him so fervently that he could only gulp effusively in response, his trembling mouth not able to form words. It did not matter to the woman, who merely stood back, released him and walked to the still open door.

She put one foot through before looking back. "Thou were offered thy freedom once before, Alfred, and thou failed to cinch. I can promise, liberty will not knock a third time."

She left, abandoning the shivering, pathetic mess of a man behind her. Even as he made his first stumbling attempts to stand, however, he found himself uncertain if he should follow into that painful light or return to the cold darkness that still bound him even now.

And yet, in that light, Alfred found his answer. As his eyes adjusted, as the whitewash against the darkness began to warm his face instead of burn it, he felt the love of the Star's rays bathe him, nourishing not only his beleaguered body, but his vacillating soul. With that light came a feast for each every one of his depraved senses: a scent of vibrant mountain lilies, an embrace of succulent flesh, a taste of his lover's kiss, the earnest, half-heart-broken melody of Edward's song.

Had he stayed locked in that dungeon for all those uncountable days and nights, never willing to accept the Party's entreaties, never surrendering his faith, never betraying his people for no reason but misplaced tenacity? Had he been so broken, become so confused, drifted so far from paradise that he could no longer yearn for salvation? Had he forgotten so quickly the beauty of this universe that he was now condemned merely to dread the addition to his misery? Had he lost sight of the path so completely that he would no longer gamble, no longer risk, no longer stake anything less than his whole entire being in pursuit of something higher than himself?

Alfred stood.

For the moment, that was answer enough.

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Although an imperial frigate was among the largest free-standing structures ever conceived by man – vessels so large, in fact, they had to be assembled in space, lest the gravity of a nearby planet cause the mass of these floating mountains to implode – their majesty, their beauty, their genius craftmanship and sleek engineering were only aspects that could ever be appreciated from their exterior. The instant one docked, they were greeted with the same smoothed concrete walls, white painted corridors and endless cubicle office space the Home Empire employed everywhere else.

The ship-rats and enlisted men might swab the insides of the titanic engines, oil the colossal torpedo bays or even sleep within the curling tentacles of the Haruspex, but for those above them – for those like Xiao – one imperial asset was like any other. Ship, base, palace or field tent, those dreaded cubicles followed her everywhere, and every meeting room looked just like the last.

Despite the uncanny similarities between every salon throughout their sprawling Empire, however, the people contained within could be radically different. The legionnaires on Septimi, for example, may have set a point of comparison so low it would seem impossible for any to score beneath them, but it took Lady Ci only a few moments to begin coveting those legions she had lost over these she had found.

As she entered the room, she immediately noticed the Praetor Zheng was not seated at the head of the table. He was not distinguished by the insignia of his rank either, having eschewed the usual grandiose ornamentation of his office. Worse still, the commanders and legates seated around him seem to pay him no deference whatsoever. Instead of dominating his men, it was clear he was attempting some sort of cohabitation with them, to mingle and blend in a project all, including the newcomer Xiao herself, could not fail to see was doomed to failure.

Zheng He was a man of many names. Born He Al-din, he had been captured as a child by the Hongwu Emperor after the deceased ruler had conquered He's barbarian tribe. Growing up in the imperial palace, he had been given a new jiawen name, "Ma He" to which the boy clung with every ounce of his being.

His deep, brown skin was the only tenuous connection he still held to a culture the Home Empire had all but eradicated long before he had even been old enough to remember it. It was also a crime from which Ma would never be fully pardoned. Though he felt himself a true imperial through and through, what forever remained unknown to him was that He – along with countless other captured barbarians of various rank and privilege – had been collected as little more than a foreign curiosity, a performer of alien traits and deformities at which the Emperor and his confidantes could gawk, ponder and chortle.

Every instance of his assimilation was taken not as a proof of his having civilized himself, but instead as just another, ever more brilliant, subtle addition to a brilliant performance. His meticulous jiawen accent demonstrated the barbarian's adept skill of impressionism and mastery of "tonal adaptation". His beautiful, flowing characters and crisp calligraphy were expressions of the foreigner's dexterity, his athletic poise and serene concentration. His vivid poetry and moving songs were the natural extrapolations of his race's long and storied oral tradition. Everything he did, no matter how small, how ordinary, how insignificant, could not help but be transformed by some immutable quality within himself into an expansive, fully expressive statement on the entire past, present and future of his whole race of human beings.

Then, of course, after a while, he became boring; too boring for the Emperor to consider Himself all too much as to his continued existence. So, the adolescent Ma was deposed in exactly the same way and precisely the same place Lady Ci had been: the Legion trade mission on Cassia Prime. Together, the two outcasts would find themselves unlikely allies, both driven to exceed in a crush of mediocrity that threatened to drown them both, but never quite did. And together, they would come to make names for themselves – rather literally in He's case, who had been given a new, even more imperial-sounding name "Zheng" by the new Yongle Emperor himself.

And yet, after all of it, even a new name officially adjoining him to one of the most revered imperial clans, he remained as a brown as ever. In fact, now that his fair was fraying and growing white, the contrast with his wrinkling, black-spotted dark skin had only become more apparent with age, and the ridicule he endured from his inferiors, ever more pointed.

"Lady Ci," Zheng began, rising himself up from his perch as he did so, "you have not aged but a single day in those decades since I last glimpsed upon your face."

"Oh!" cried one of the captains at his side, jeering like lecherous schoolboys. "Look how he swoons at his consort! Oh, what a sight it is to behold: the master so entranced at the first whiff of cunt his virgin nostrils have smelt in years. Haha!"

The officer slapped his Praetor on the shoulder as the other commanders around him all burst into laughter, shoving into their leader and rubbing his clumpy hair as if he were nothing more than a puppy. Zheng, to his part, kept a painfully tight, performative smile on his lip. His back seemed to buckle under the weight, as his stance, previously proud and tall, slowly became more hunched and submissive. His eyes never once looked up at the governor, and she well imagined them to be cast in shame.

"Enough!" She cut through the din. "We have come all this way for a private interview with the Praetor on his flagship. We will not have our pressing business derailed in any way by this Legion buffoonery. Out! Each and every last one of you. Be gone!"

The officers were obviously quite shocked to be spoken to in so forceful a tone, and they were equally mystified to find their superior suddenly straightening his spine once more, ringing out in a commanding tone to which they were unaccustomed.

"You heard the woman, you filthy miscreants!" He shouted out at the mob around him. "You are dismissed!"

The legionnaires, still being quite unfamiliar with such an authoritative tone, merely stood and milled around the conference room for some time, not quite certain how serious the call to disperse was. It was not long, however, that anyone could linger under the fiery gaze of the governor's rage before even the staunchest of defenders was forced to flee. All it took, then, was the Lady Ci breaking the spirit of one or two of the legates before the rest of their fellows soon followed. Soon, Zheng and she were entirely alone but for the presence of a single officer, leaning his back against a support beam near the centre of the room.

"Please, your excellency," the man entreated, "I am Commandant Wu, the Praetor's right-hand-."

"Out!" Xiao spat back at him, his rank only incensing her further.

The man cut a glance over her head to Zheng, but clearly sensing he was unwelcome, he shook his head and left after his peers.

The doors had barely slid closed before the man let out a sigh and said, "I really do like Wu, Xiao-xiao. He is likely the only one here who respects me. I cannot toss him aside so easily."

Lady Ci flew into a frenzy at only the suggestion. "Him?" she demanded, "the only one who respects thee? I suppose it is not so difficult to believe. When I see how thou handle such cases of insults to thy person as I have witnessed, I can understand quite well how that might be the case."

Zheng rolled his eyes, holding the right side of his face against a fist as he looked up at the governor. "It was just a harmless joke, Xiao. Thou heard the way I spoke back to them. That is simply how these mobile legions are. We are all a little ...," he shrugged, "informal."

Ci slapped the table before them, hoping the vibrations might force the Praetor to awaken from his stupor. "This is rank insubordination, He! Thou cannot let it stand! If no retribution is visited upon him, thy officers will only continue to demean and disrespect thee, until eventually the armada will be lost in its entirety."

Zheng just shook his head, "And how am I to chastise him? I am alone here, Xiao. I have no private army with which to arrest and detain the captain, no private court with which to try and sentence him. My only power is the power of complaint, to write a formal letter to the Joint Chiefs asking he be dismissed and hoping that they listen. And that – I think thou will agree – that is something I cannot do."

Zheng stood up from his chair and walked across the board room to the tea service at the far corner. He poured two cups and continued.

"Thou can decry thy fall from grace all thou wish, Xiao, but thy consolation prize of a governorship is still higher than any power and prestige than I have ever received, ever will receive. I am not allowed to fail, Xiao. I cannot fail. If thou fail, it is accepted as an error for which thou can pay penance and be forgiven. If I fail, then it is proof I was a filthy, uncultured, ignorant barbarian all along and it just took this long for Heaven to finally notice."

"So, how can I possibly complain, Lady Ci? How can I possibly make trouble, admit defeat, choose deliberately to stand out when I already stand out so much and so unwantedly? No, I will keep my head down, accept the abuse, show it yields no power over me and continue to give orders. I will demonstrate the futility of such words by showing I am impervious to them, that I can hear it, take it, let those poisonous, acrid words seep beneath my skin, but still shout out commands as if nothing has changed. That will be my victory."

Zheng rubbed the exhaustion out of his wrinkled face, compressing his flustered cheek into a roll of flab before finally sighing and saying, "anyways, it does not matter. I just hate to be lectured. Thou know it. I hated it then; I hate it now, and clearly, all the ensuing years have done nothing to cure that ... pedagogical streak in thee."

He chuckled, lifting his eyes up to meet her. "But, regardless, let us talk of it no longer. We have not laid eyes upon one another for more than ten years, and this is the topic of conversation? Please, thou and I are not so old as to rely only on ancient quarrels to liven our tongues, are we not?"

Despite it all, Xiao could not help but wink as she experienced her old friend's charm once again. "Well, perhaps not only that."

He laughed, stood up from his chair across from the governor and walked around the table, seating himself right at her side, their toes but a few centimetres away from touching.

Almost as if he had cast some sort of spell, wielded some form of magic, he leaned casually against the table, staring intently – perhaps even longingly – into the lady's eyes, and all of a sudden, all the wear and tear, the aches and burdens, the blotches and patches of his many years just peeled back from his face. For a single, fleeting moment that Xiao wished with all the longing in her heart could last a lifetime, he was perfect image of the man she had known so long ago.

"So," he began, darting his fingers up and down the fabric padding of her chair, "what have thou been up to since thy dastardly demotion?"

The governor caught a shudder almost before it had escaped her body. There was not a bone in her body that did not want to continue this conversation to where He was undoubtedly leading it, but after all that had happened, after all she had seen – likely would continue to see – even that man's charm and well-aged handsomeness could not distract her from her mission.

She could not just spurn him entirely, however. She had negotiated with enough powerful men to understand that. So, Xiao did as she had learned to do best; she played coy.

Ci fluttered her eyelashes. "I refuse to count a governorship of an imperial province as a demotion from anything, and thee," she slapped Zheng's hand just as it was about to rest on her thigh, "thy penchant for exploration might be better kept purely to space if thou are to keep that woman companion of whom thou wrote me before."

He shook his head, a look of slight regret only momentarily breaking the smile on his lip. "Nothing came of that one, I'm afraid," he said, sniffing just once while his eyes trailed off and his hand came to sit on a lap of his own. "No, I cannot say there has ever really been any woman to betray for another, though Heaven knows, with thee before me, I would have no strength but to betray her if she had given me the chance. But, no, she did not, and no one else ever has or likely will. Women, they just..." he held his hands in air, at a loss for words.

"... I'm a stop along the way for them, I think: a waystation and little else," he posited, after something of a pensive silence. "They're happy to mill about as long as they like, but all of them, each of every one of them, they know they can't stay here forever. Sooner or later, they all hop back on the train, to that perfect, imperial man and their perfect imperial children just at the end of the track."

He hung his head, not quite in shame, but Xiao could feel a sadness in him welling up that even he himself might not have been able to detect, but to her, she who knew him so well, was impossible not to spot. She felt compelled to rush her hand to his cheek, brushing it ever so tenderly as she said, "thou are not but a station, He. Believe me, thou are the whole Heavenly train."

He laughed, his eyes nearly glazed over with a sort of a bitter delight, and he began pressing his hand against Xiao's as it still remained placed on his cheek. She could only withstand the slightest touch before she recoiled, however, and the Praetor understood the signal all too well. Their chairs, once tilted so close to one another, now shifted farther back.

The man coughed. "What about thee?" he asked, though he was interviewing the table more than the governor at this point, unable to quite meet her gaze. He gathered his courage, however, and looked back at her, though this time donning a much more serious tone. "Did thou ever meet someone – someone ... else ... these past ten years?"

Ci snorted. "I never wrote of it, did I?"

Zheng smiled, though it came out more like a grimace. "I always imagined thou might have felt somewhat ... I don't know ... ashamed to admit it if thou did." He laughed, nervous but genuine, "to be entirely frank, knowing how determined thou were to the contrary, I fancied thou would be scared beyond thy wits to put any such 'failing' to words."

"Thou and thy imagination do never cease to amaze, He." The governor arched her eyebrows, gripping her tea as she did so, letting it warm her trembling fingers, still frail from his touch. "If I am to be honest myself, I did consider it. Certainly, I did. But, I knew if I were to marry, it would never be for love or legacy – my students are my children, and my work is my heart – but nothing more than a crass accumulation of ever more power."

"The thing is," she grinned, "after I found myself an imperial minister, there were not many men more powerful than me to marry. And besides," she shrugged, "I had no interest in being just another of the Emperor's concubines anyway."

He held his temple, sniveling humorously. "Thou certainly do hold thyself in high esteem, to think even the Son of Heaven be too good for thee."

"Of, Heaven no!" Xiao crowed back. "I would have fucked the very life from that old crone at any minute if only He had ever asked. It just so happens His Majesty was far too preoccupied with his other, more manly ministers to ever give me a second glance!"

"No!" Zheng roared with laughter, slapping his knee as he shouted, "thou gargantuan gossip, thee!"

It was so comforting then, so peaceful and welcoming in that moment, laughing with her old friend as she had done so often and so much, back in that nearly forgotten time devoid of woe and strife, that she nearly did not realize his hand settling on her chair once again, so dangerously, temptingly near her leg.

She bit her lip, trying as hard as she could not to panic, not to allow the well of emotions to overflow and shatter her meticulous façade. She breathed a deep, calming breath, all but ignoring the man as she shifted her body away from his encroaching fingers before ironing her posture, solidifying her poise and staring blankly. As professionally as she could muster, without even a hint of regret or longing or adoration or fear – without anything – in her voice, she spoke.

"How many frigates did you bring us, Praetor?"

Zheng clenched his teeth in frustration and coughed once. Mouth still covered by his hand, his eyes darted back to the lady, and when he saw no change in her, he coughed again, straightened his back in equal measure and pulled himself as far away from her as he could.

"Five," he said, nodding his head as he did so and biting the bottom right corner of his lips.

The governor puckered in surprise. She had been expecting more. "Legions?" she asked.

"Three," he replied, his face now just as still and emotionless as hers.

"Three legions!" Xiao shouted back. "What in Huangdi's name were you doing on Baetica with three blasted legions? How on earth were thou ever planning to subjugate seven moons of tribes with such a paltry force?"

"That was never the objective, your excellency," the Praetor replied. "Although I personally would very much have wished to see the Baeticans vassalized under my tenure, the Cassians made it quite clear to our government that the establishment of any additional imperial colonies in this system would be considered a cause for war, and your former colleagues within the CIC clearly took the threat seriously." He lifted his shoulders and sighed. "We were there on a trading mission; no one ever had any intention of putting these troops to a fight."

"Well, they better find themselves up to the task!" Ci exclaimed, "because that war our imperial ministers so want delayed is all but upon us, and we will have no choice soon but to put this army afield and hold our ground while we wait for reinforcements."

"Wait, wait, wait," Zheng commanded, holding his hands aloft in confusion. "What are thou saying? What war? What possibly be the cause of this?"

Xiao scoffed, exasperated. "Did thou bother to read even the most insignificant part of my messages to thee?"

He's eyes furrowed. "Of course! I read everything. You suffered some insurrection on the planet Septimi, no? And your legions were badly damaged, requiring some reinforcement."

"Our legions were not damaged, He! They're lost!"

"Lost!" Zheng was utterly confounded. "Four legions? Four entire legions ... lost?" His jaw hung open in shock. "How is that even possible?"

"The revolution, Zheng! The Party!" Ci gripped the edges of her scalp, nearly ready to pull out her hair in annoyance. "Did thou really read none of this?"

He snapped his fingers in recognition. "Yes, of course, I did ... just not from thee." His lip twitched slightly in bewilderment. "But no, I did read of your little revolt, yes. Thy commandant, that fine woman – what's her name? Ping, Pan, Peng ... something like that – she wrote me all about it. I'm quite surprised thou did not bring her with thee. From the tales she and thy other officers have been writing me, she sounds like a most remarkable woman, no doubt one of the finest commanders our Legion has ever known."

Xiao was so taken aback that for a moment her mind was swirling so fast she could not even assemble a single chaotic thought into her head. The pieces merely circled and encircled her, taunting her as she felt that familiar, terrifying panic shimmering in the edges of her vision. But then, just as her stomach was threatening to turn, everything clicked into place.

Quentin had not been lying after all. She had not just read every message the governor had ever sent Zheng and his superiors in the IJC, she had intercepted them. She must have used her communications array to drown out the flurry of communiques Ci had been sending out, replacing it all with a deluge of her own - a flood of propaganda - all of it exalting her exploits, her brilliance and her indispensability. All He seemed to have had ever received was Ci's first, brief distress call, and Pan had done her level best to fill in the blanks.

Lady Ci leaned towards the praetor as close as she possibly could, her fists clenching the fabric of the uniform at his shoulders. "Zheng," she began, her eyes narrowing to pinpricks as her voice lowered nearly an entire octave into a dire seriousness. "Thou must listen and must listen well. That woman, Pan, she is dangerous, He – more dangerous than thou could possibly imagine. She is a monster, He. A demon, a genuine, certifiable devil and one who can never forget the taste of blood now that it stains her tongue."

"She is not my officer, Zheng. That woman, she overthrew me. I appointed her in a time a need, a time of desperation, and she overthrew me. She ganged together every hoodlum, brigand and fanatic in the colony under some boorish platform of 'cleansing the imperial race', and that was enough, my friend. That was more than enough. She gathered up all the violence and hatred and envy in our entire colony, and gave it one giant excuse to escape, one place to detonate, and it did. They locked me away in the dungeon of my palace, and spent weeks murdering, torturing, raping – and worse – to every last barbarian in sight. It is over now (I'm told) but only after the colony is in ruins, only after the streets lay cluttered with debris and dead, only after the savages expunged the last of their supply: the last men to kill, women to defile and children to torment."

"I called thee, Zheng. I begged thee to come, to remove this woman, to help me restore some order, some justice in our colony before such a concept is lost forever. But her thugs, they still control all the Legion equipment, all the weaponry, the radios, the satellite array, the transportation infrastructure, everything. I could send you one message in secret, but it seems Pan intercepted everything I sent afterwards. And I understand this a great deal to absorb all at once, but thou have to know, Zheng. Thou have to know. Every word thou have received from the planet not written expressly by myself has been a lie, and not just any kind of lie, but an atrocious, disgusting, treacherously deceptive lie meant to glorify or else erase this evil. But now, thou know the truth, Praetor."

"Thou have heard it clear and true, and it is time to correct the record, fix the mistakes and purge the errors. Three legions is not what I wanted, but with their training and with their resolve, it can be enough. Even now, Pan is undoubtedly preparing her defences against us. If we attack early, swoop in now, we can neutralize her and her supporters, restoring peace and justice all without too much loss. But, Zheng, by Heaven, we must move now!"

A long, tortured silence broke between them, filled only with the Praetor pursing his lips, wincing, gulping and otherwise contorting his face uncomfortably, not quite certain how to respond nor how to present himself. He eyed the door, clearly wanting to evacuate at the nearest possible convenience. The governor noticed his hesitation and slid her chair closer to him, trapping him, forcing to reply as she asked, "what's wrong, He? What is going on with thee?"

Zheng inhaled a deep, nervous breath, switching his head away from the intensity of governor's stare, but eventually he did answer, his eyes darting back and forth between her and the table, never confident enough to stay anywhere too long.

"Xiao...," he sighed, hand clasping his head. "It's just not.... It's ... it's just not that simple."

Ci stared back at him, wide-eyed and incredulous. "Yes, He. It is!"

Zheng bit his lip in frustration, a trace of anger rising to surface. "Xiao, I know thou have been divorced from the CIC more than a year now, but have thou truly lost touch with our Home so thoroughly? Have thou no sense – not even in the slightest! – of the circumstances which our people now face?"

Xiao's fingers clawed into her kneecaps, not wanting to know, but needing to despite that. "What is happening?"

He threw his hands in air. "So, she does not know." He rolled his eyes. "Dear heart, please let not the shock halt thy beating."

"What is happening, Zheng?" Ci pressed him more forcefully, grabbing his shoulder once more.

"Socialism, Xiao," the Praetor responded, disgust clinging to his voice. "General strikes, all across the Dyson Sphere, up and down the Oort cloud. Millions, tens of millions, all our workers, our slaves, our labourers from a whole Empire of conquered peoples, they are rising in revolt. A third of Sphere shutdown when I left, but that was already enough to dispatch the Legion. I have no doubt it is much worse, infinitely worse."

The lady was pushed back to her chair, the force of the news blasting her backwards like the slap of a hand.

"So, no, Xiao, it is not so simple, because right now, right at his moment, our Empire is faced with an existential threat. Our lifeblood, our grand project, our raison d'etre, our industry is now more challenged than it ever has been, and it is being challenged by a movement of overtly Party organized, foreign funded infiltrators and turncoats. And in this time of peril, one woman, a lone, enterprising academic, who you yourself chose to elevate to the rank of Commandant, led the Home Empire's first retaliation, fired the first shot, struck the first blow against the enemy. That woman, that Quentin, she defeated the Reds! Or do thou now deny that too?"

Ci shook her head, no longer able to hold back the first trickling of anxious tears now wetting her eyes. "No, thou cannot!" Zheng continued, shouting, "and I cannot either. So, here I am, Xiao. I do not deny anything thou say for a moment. I am certain this woman is ruthless. I am certain this woman harbours no morals. I am certain this woman is nothing short of an absolute monstrosity, but I am also certain that it is exactly what our Empire needs! In any other time, such a woman would be locked away. In days like these, she'll be elevated and adored."

He's small, well-manicured hand pinched an inflamed nerve near the ridge of his eyebrows. "And now, thou storm in here, lecture me in the first three seconds of our meeting after having spent ten years apart and demand that we destroy this woman. Why, how can I possibly explain how distinct from reality, how laughably insane such a proposition does sound? My officers have no desire to destroy this woman. They want to promote her!"

"After weeks of hearing nothing but the daring exploits of a rugged, enterprising female commandant in her quest to quell the barbarians and vanquish the reds, thou come along with an entirely different story, a darker story. Thou wail songs of commiseration, tales of woe and panic, of madness and chaos, of villains and treachery, and I am sorry, Xiao, I really am, but no one wants to hear it. Not me, not the admiralty, not the Legion. Not a single soul in all the universe wants to hear that story, Xiao, and so as much as it pains me to say it, thine is a request I have no choice but to refuse."

The governor's tongue seemed to flop in her mouth like a fish upon the land, flubbing about without aim, direction or hope. To have one's fears be validated was one thing but discovering that even the worst of her nightmares had been almost mild approximations of the horror now playing out before her welcomed an anxiety that was almost too unbelievable, too surreal to even be truly terrifying. Ci had guessed her messages might be intercepted. She had assumed it would be difficult to have Pan unseated. But never, not in all the most gut-wrenching of scenarios playing over and over in her mind unceasingly for these last torturous weeks, had she ever imagined herself here, pleading for the very life of a whole planet of living, breathing human beings and only to be absolutely ignored.

It was too terrible to accept, and so Ci refused to do it. Her voice creaked to a crawl, her words drawn out one by one like they were tied to a magician's ribbon being pulled from her throat, as she spoke once more. "He, thou must heed me when I say this. It would not matter if that woman were put in charge of a century of scullery maids. Every day she remains unchallenged, every day she remains in command of anything is a day that innocent people will die."

No matter the gravity of her tone, the Praetor was anaesthetized to it. He merely scoffed, noting, "but she is not chef of the kitchen brigade, now, is she? No, no, no! That woman is the head of a whole legion, this 'Black Legion' which you not only created but invested her as commandant, did thou not?"

Zheng brought up his hand to silence the governor before she could protest. "Yes, I know, acting commandant. I am not suggesting thou usurped the Emperor's power for yourself (although, let us acknowledge the reality, Xiao, thou would supplant the man in a heart-beat if thou thought thou could).We can go exchange views all day and night as to whether or not you have the right to issue such an appointment, but the problem, the insurmountable problem, Xiao, is that you did issue that appointment."

"And you, you the governor of the province of Septimi, enjoy a military imperium on that planet that we ourself, the Praetor of the Cassian System, do not have floating around here in contested space. On your planet, you can do as you please, but me, on my ships – with far better communication links to the Home World – I need to ask the Imperial Joint Chiefs before I so much as serve thee a beverage (They chose the tea, by the way. I hope it met thy exacting standards.)."

"So, anyways, little sister, I beg of thee, what solutions lie floating there in that infinitely wise, uncannily brilliant, estimably genius head which could rescue me from this dilemma? Do thou even understand why we military men are made to use the EAGLE in the first place? It's deliberate sabotage; the IJC intentionally made it difficult to communicate with them so that only the most important information could ever come back to them. In such a large and complicated Empire like ours, they have no desire to become bogged down in the weeds – they simply cannot become bogged down in the weeds, and this, Xiao," a small, condescending puff of pity escaped his lips, "this might be important to thee, but it is nothing to them, Xiao. I promise, it's meaningless, unimportant: a line item of another line item."

Lady Ci could feel her tenuous grasp on her temper begin to wane. Pleading to convince Zheng of a truth right before his ignorant nose had been agonizing enough, but being lectured by the man she had tutored, assisted and propelled his entire career was unbearable. She snarled, "it isn't nothing now, but when that woman and her private army of explicit genocidaires begin the wholescale slaughter of a billion Cassians on that planet, it most certainly will not be nothing then."

He just shook his head. "No, thou clearly have not been paying attention, absolutely none whatsoever. The IJC has been very clear, painstakingly clear, that there is no systemic racism or imperial chauvinism within the Legion whatsoever. The Legion is our Empire's most racially, culturally, and ethnically diverse institution, and there is absolutely zero tolerance not only of the presence of racism but of the suggestion that there might even be such a thing."

The Praetor's eyes grew scared, almost desperate as he continued, "if the IJC says there is no racism our military, there is no racism – period, and if I – I, the highest-ranking foreigner in the whole fifty thousand year history of our Empire, suggests otherwise, I can well promise thee what will happen. I'll be finished, caput, over. No more praetorship, no more command, no more career, no second chance." He grasped at his forehead again, "no, no way, absolutely not."

"Fine, choose not tell them about the extremists. Just wait until you're reporting the genocide!" Ci screamed back. "Tell them once it isn't just a few thousand barbarians dead, but a few million. Let us see how well thy career advances then!"

Zheng bared his teeth. "Of all the people from whom I could accept this pathetic ... performance of moral superiority, thou rank at the absolute bottom. That distress signal thou sent me, it used a code specifically assigned to Legate Haig. Not only are thou not him, but Haig, like every other legate has been trained so thoroughly, so profoundly, so intuitively to destroy their EAGLE in the event of defeat or capture that it is, without a doubt, an impossibility that thou could have acquired it in any way innocuously."

The governor was incredulous. She clenched her jaw and narrowed her gaze, daring the Praetor to speak further. "And of what would thou accuse me? How do thou think I did so nocuously produce his codes?"

Zheng shrugged his shoulders. "I could not possibly say, but this Pan whom thou hate so dearly certainly has a theory or two. She is more than willing to accuse thee of many things. In her letters, she does discuss it in great detail, telling us not merely how you 'lost four legions' but how you lost control of your legions. It is a theory, that to me, at least, explains quite well how you might have been very willing to destroy the troops with which the Emperor had furnished you, trading them for ones thou found more acquiescent: my army, thou hope.

Ci could feel her breath catching in the back of her throat as the outline of the room around her became colourless and grey, intensifying all her focus and determination through the fish-eye lens of desperation. She gripped her friend's hand and began to beg as she had never before been made to beg, hoping more than she had ever needed to hope that she could say but one word to which he would listen.

"If thou wish for me to admit it, I shall, He, I shall," she began, speaking through her tears as they trickled out, timid and controlled, but their flow ultimately unstoppable. "I was weak, He. I was scared. Haig was cornered. He had abandoned his artillery, his vehicles, his baggage train. We had no support from the air, and Pan had blocked him off in the Arctic mountains. His whole army was just days away from starvation or hypothermia – possibly both – and so I did a cowardly thing, a sure thing. I did not try to save him and risk defeat, risk losing that EAGLE that he might be forced to destroy it. So, I betrayed him. I deserted him. I had a spy enter his camp in the night and steal the EAGLE for me before it ever had the chance to be lost."

Xiao could see the shock on Zheng's face, and she immediately placed her own hand over his, caging his fingers in hers, trying to reassure him, yet also ensuring he could not pull away. "But it isn't enough to just know I did it, He. Thou must know why I did it. I am not lying to thee, He; I am not! I swear it. On my life, I swear it! Thou were with me on Cassia Prime, thou witnessed as the old Order collapsed, as the Cassians descended into madness and destruction, and even after all of that, after all I have seen, all that irrepressible horror through which we lived, nothing has terrified me more than that woman, He. Nothing. She thirsts for blood like a desert thirsts for water."

Her hands shook so much that Zheng's whole arm began to vibrate up and down as she continued. "So, I simply cannot lose, He. I cannot lose. I cannot even allow the possibility of losing, and that is why I played the way I did, played to win it all, because to lose is to lose everything. There can be no hedging of bets or securing promotions or assigning anyone else to take the fall."

"I am no stranger to politics; I know all the tricks, but I know also when they can no longer be used. So, I hope thou will trust me, He – no, I need thou to trust me when I say, without even the faintest shadow of a doubt, that if we do not correct this woman and correct her fast, it will not just be our careers at stake, but our very lives. She was too distracted or too busy to kill me before, He, but trust me, as clear as the sky is blue and rice is white, Pan will not make the same mistake twice – with either of us."

Then, for a long, almost limitless moment, they said nothing. Zheng just stared, opening and closing his mouth repeatedly in an endless, silent caricature of confusion and befuddlement as he chewed over what to say. Eventually, though, he gulped and elected to speak one final time.

"Look, Xiao," he said, unable but to wince at the awkwardly parental tone he found himself adopting. "I do believe thee, and ... disturbing as thy tale of Haig and his EAGLE might be," he chuckled, dryly, "I have had the uncommon pleasure of knowing thee for more than half a century, and there is nothing in that story that surprises me in the slightest. Thou will always do what thou believe to be right, no matter the cost to or reaction from anybody else. I admire that in thee, Xiao. By Heaven, I love that in thee, my dear, but that courage, that conviction," he hung his head, "it just is not something I possess."

He raised his right hand on top of Ci's so now he was clutching her paws, and with a warm, reassuring smile, he said, "but that does not mean I cannot do anything."

He breathed in deeply. "Here is what can be done. She's a Legate now; that much we cannot control, but she need not remain on Septimi. Once our army reaches the colony, we can announce a reorganization. She can come command our mobile legion here on my fleet, away from the planet, away from her supporters, where she can be isolated, and my commandant can monitor her closely together."

"My other two legions will guard the colony, retrain these 'Black Hundreds', identify all the agitators, the bad-apples and separate them from the simple fighters, the useful men, the empty-headed ones, obedient ones. Believe me, my officers can do that. I put my complete faith in them; they will sort the wheat from the chaff, and in record time, we can produce a fighting force free of all those ... unsavory elements thou with me discussed today."

"And, of course, while they are there, my men will look around. They can ask questions, document responses. They can get to the truth of what happened on the colony so that when the emergency passes, when the Party is defeated and all is calm, we will be positioned for a proper court-martial which can bring this Pan to justice."

He broke his hands away from hers and spread his arms like one might impress a child. "So, what about it? How does that sound as an acceptable compromise? Can we live with that?"

Ci's feet were tapping at the ground with such ferocity she presaged it would soon threaten the structural integrity of the frigate's hull. This "acceptable compromise" was barely even one sliver of one ten thousandth part of what she needed to accomplish, but it was clearly as far as Zheng was willing to budge. That being said, Lady Ci would not "live with it", not for a single moment, and even as she prepared to accept, the gears of her mind were already turning and clanking, the ultimate goal never out of sight for more than an instant.

For now, at least, she acceded. She nodded, said yes, even let the Praetor take that obnoxious kiss on her cheek before seeing herself out, strutting through the heavy metal bulkhead that separated the conference room from the corridor. After a setback such as this, she would need to find Ilya back on her ship and use his conversation to strategize.

That had been the plan, anyway, but somehow, mere moments after exiting the interview, Zheng's commandant, Wu, descended upon the governor like a vulture careening down from the sky.

"If thou had been any easier to find, Wu," Ci began, gritting her teeth in frustration, "we would have assumed thou were eavesdropping."

"Why deny it!" the general laughed. "There is nothing the Praetor learns which I will not know eventually. Better to hear it from the source than bungle my way through intermediaries."

Xiao shot the commandant a look so cold the man felt himself suddenly frozen in place. "Thou mangy dog's whelp! I shall not spare another word to thee," she declared, raising her skirts that she could rush away all the hastier.

"Wait!" Wu called back, running after her. "Wait," he pushed her against the wall, far back from the central corridor where they might be less likely to be overhead. "I overhead everything, Your Excellency, and I think you will find me a more receptive audience than him. He can put as many officers on these ships as he likes, but as his commandant, I, ultimately, am the one who must command them. He might not care about this woman's deeds, but I, sure as the last thirty generations of my ancestors can attest, have no desire to see her serve under me."

The governor had tensed up from being pinned to the bulkhead, but now she allowed herself to relax. "Continue," she said, intrigued.

Wu shook his head. "There is not anything else we can say here. Adjoin me in my quarters, so we might discuss it further."

The governor nodded. What sort of lady would she be, after all, if she were to refuse such a gentlemanly invitation as this?

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"Hark! Hark! The Gretwalder! Our Saviour, He has returned!"

Yes, indeed he very much had, Aeplerad mused to himself, grinning.

At first, after the doctors had woken him up to be greeted with his most loyal Keepers all assembled around him, it all had seemed too absurd to be believed.

True, a nearly collapsed hospital of cracking concrete walls plagued with power outages flittering the lights like panicked fireflies was hardly the description of the afterlife the Revelations had promised him, but the Gretwalder could was not such a fool as to think his multitudinous (though excusable) sins would have granted the paradise of a saint. Perhaps a celestial planet of concrete would be good enough. So long as there were servants to attend to it - someone Aeplerad could easily and unquestionably place beneath himself – that was all the providence he needed.

In short order it appeared, however, that Karl's bullet – his memory of which remained so vivid it was if he had watched it for hours traveling at a snail's pace from the back of the Great Hall straight into his own royal brain – had fallen just short of his mark, that his vital organs had remained intact, and with the assistance of (outrageously expensive) imperial magic, his life had been preserved. Better than preserved, even, for when the Gretwalder finally swung his legs over the gurney and used his arms to push himself up to stand, he realized that his body had not merely been revived, but entirely restored: a full twenty or thirty years of wear and tear miraculously shaved off for good measure.

Still, it all had seemed a little too perfect. For Aeplerad, himself, it was not really until he had made his triumphal re-entrance to the city of Lundenvarr - as he once again breathed the fresh sea air and witnessed his beloved peons cheer in delight - that he truly believed his own return.

"Arise, our people. Arise!" the Gretwalder called out to the crowds as he walked up a makeshift staircase of empty oil cans to proselytize atop a pauper's tin roof.

Stretched out around him for miles and endless miles was nothing but similar huts and ramshackle dwellings, the bottomless slums of Vitharr's second largest city. And there, hearing his rumbling, galvanizing voice, all twenty million of its impoverished, emaciated, starry-eyed denizens seemed at that moment to have stopped dead in their tracks, fallen silent, abandoned their work and turned his way to lend their weary ears.

"Arise, our children," he orated, speaking in a tone that had not been so rich and smooth since the days of some half-remembered youth. "Your father has returned, and he is here to avenge you of your suffering. He is here to strike vengeance at the heart of the hated, half-breed uncle Kang!"

Edgar had planned to rally in the tapestry district, a section of the city where all the weavers and tapissiers – those peasants who almost always worked from their own home – would be sure to be bundled away in their tightly packed houses that warm, autumn morning. At first, there had been little more than a trickle of curious (and starving) itinerants – the homeless and unemployed who were too bored and too desperate to do anything else but chase down rumours of their saviour's suspected return. But, as they gathered, the crowd alone became a spectacle enough to attract the attention of the weavers from their looms and once the Gretwalder finally took his stand, it did not take long for the frenzied, excited word to travel throughout the whole of the city.

As Aeplerad surveyed the crowd, he felt a heat, a passion, a raw and sizzling energy rising from them. With every shout and cheer his whole being with resonate with their love, their adoration, their sense of wonder and hope, fueling him and pressing him further. He tore apart the script Edgar had had him memorize mere moments before and began sounding out the crowd, repeating those words that produced the greatest cries and screaming out the claims that stunned the most faces.

"Be still, our children! Avast your beating hearts! Your leader has returned, not merely from the capital, not merely from the Great Hall, not merely from the farthest depths of the Empire, but from death itself! We, your Gretwalder, the father of our glorious nation, was killed! It is true. There was no coma, no injury, no long and interminable sleep, just cold, miserable, seemingly permanent ... death. We were murdered, we say! For the love of this country, we were murdered, and our sinning, pathetic soul drowned all way to very the bowels of Blackhell!"

"But, what was the end of all before was not to be the end for us! That could never be end of us! In the depths of that afterlife, that horrifying, magnificent place situated perilously between ecstasy and torment, our eternal, patriotic love of the Vidar people enlivened our soul and enflamed our being, protecting our essence from incineration and dismemberment by the awesome power of the Holy Star."

"And so, through sheer force of will, we tore ourselves away from the iron-grip of Blackhell, and we fought the seven Celestial Demons who vigilantly guard the Planet of Gods. Though brutally we did battle, finding ourselves severely injured beyond what seemed like all hope of recovery, it was our indomitable will that brought us to victory. We sacrificed our eyes, our feet, our arms and legs, our blood and sweat, we sacrificed every ounce of energy and scrap of life in our being, but never once, not even for the briefest of moments or the shortest of breaths did we ever so much as contemplate defeat. It was that spirit, that unconquerable desire to success that finally vanquished the enemies of the gods and were permitted entry to the Holy Stars."

As the sun ended its dramatic arc upwards towards the sky, signalling the beginning of a long, hot noon, its light radiated across the limitless sea of ramshackle dwellings, glinting off the tin roofs and forming a shimmering mirage that waved and glimmered until it became impossible for the Gretwalder to distinguish between the ocean of reality and the ocean of illusion. The coastline was entirely obscured, awash with light, and to the onlookers now piling up around him, the body of their resurrected leader began flickering in this sea of glittering eminence. Aeplerad only fed into the image, closing his eyes, stretching his arms towards the heavens and bellowing with all the electricity of a bolt of lightning, streaking across the increasingly eccentric mob.

"It was there that the god Woden Himself did reveal Himself to us! That is true! We said it. It is true! We, Aeplerad, we your leader did lay eyes upon the King of the Gods, the All Father as surely thou have met thy own parents. And not only did we meet, but we were welcomed to his table – not as any regular man but as a demi-god in human form, the child of my human mother and our true progenitor, Thor, the Mighty Hammer! Look on all you wretches, you indigents, you scallywags; look towards your saviour, and you see a child of Thor!"

"But, as Woden did lament, we had died too young. The grand ambition, the glorious purpose, the eternal destiny for which we were brought about on this earth had yet to be fulfilled, hence why even death we had fought so bitterly and so intrepidly to escape the jowls of Blackhell. The All Father, then, wielding the power of a dwarfed sun as if it were nothing but a jewel in his palm, used His magic to resurrect ourself from the dead so that we might liberate this place from the terrible wrath of the foreign devils!"

The streets and alleyways, trenches and sewers, parks and market squares now became choked with people, an ever-mounting supply of human hillocks writhing like packed sardines, all crowding to see the dead man returned to life. The people roared with every word he spoke, and though between the thousands there was hardly an ounce of bodyfat to be shared by the lot of them, they found the strength in that moment, so moved they were by the Gretwalder's words, to cry out in a wave of euphoria that carried all across the icy oceans, startling the northern mountain-dwellers who lived on the other side.

Aeplerad could see their enthusiasm, feel it rushing through his bulging veins, and he raised his voice higher, stretched his arms wider and ran back and forth on the stage, summoning their energy like a priest might exorcise a spirit.

"Liberate Vitharr! Yes, liberate you! For though we languished in the afterlife sometime, we did not abandon you. Would the Stars abandon you? No! Then how could we! No, we watched you from the stars, those very same ones, overhead, those very same stars that even in the depths of your suffering and worst of your starvation have never left you once. We witnessed! We commiserated. And we will have retribution!"

The crowd now began to chant, inciting a sort of verbal tug of war between Aeplerad and his plebeians.

"We saw as your bellies went unfed!"

"Boo!"

"Shame!"

"We wept as your children fell ill!"

"Filthy foreigners!"

"Pox on the legions. Pox on the Emperor!"

"We raged as Kang pilfered your futures!"

"Usurper!"

"Jiaren witch!"

"Death to the foreign king!"

"By the terror of Blackhell and the might of the Gods, that is absolutely right!" Aeplerad screamed. "Death to the foreign king, and we are the ones to kill him! Hang the half-breed king!"

"Hang him!" the crowd scream backed.

"We'll burn him!"

"Burn him!" The mob's eyes filled with anger and anticipation.

"We'll tear him limb from limb!"

"Tear him limb from limb!" The people screeched with a hideous ire as they began storming around, defacing street signs, smashing store windows, going as far as to pull paving stones straight from the road – any act of rebellion whatsoever against any symbol of authority, no matter how trivial. Multiple fires began sparking near the outskirts of the protests, and Aeplerad's advisors tried to shout at him from below the rooftop where he was standing. The Gretwalder, however, was far too engrossed in the moment to hear a word they were saying.

"To Vitharr, our people!" He cried. "To the capital! Let us march and reclaim our country! Away with the foreigners! Away with the despots! Away with the-."

Edgar slammed into his ruler so hard and so suddenly that reinvigorated or not, the Gretwalder crumpled from the blow.

"My lord!" The Keeper bellowed, desperation in his eyes. "There is no time to explain. We must go, and we must go now!"

Aeplerad slapped the ungrateful serf right across his disobedient face. "No one speaks to us like that! Thou hear, Edgar? Thou hear?"

But all it took was a single glance into Edgar's frantic eyes, seeing the first of the explosions reflected in them, for the leader's mind to utterly change.

Finally the Gretwalder would a true story to tell, for though he may have been revived from the dead not more than a few short days ago, now he was truly running for his life.

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The rendezvous commenced with an unexpected (and unwanted) introduction.

As Lady Ci followed the Commandant Wu through the sliding metal doors leading to his ready room, she noticed a grey-haired, wispily bearded but bald-headed man in an admiral's uniform already seated before the Commandant's desk, clearly expecting them. The man stood and saluted at their entry.

"Your excellency," Wu spoke as the other officer took a bow, "may I have the pleasure of introducing the commander of this fine fleet, Admiral Nelson."

"Greetings, your worship," Nelson began, still kowtowing. "I chief of the Nelson clan, father of three-."

"No, thou may have the pleasure of introducing him!" Ci castigated the commandant. "After what we just discussed, can we truly to be expected to speak so frankly before not just one complete stranger but two?"

"I promise you, Lady Ci," Wu hovered his hands near the woman's shoulder as he tried to reassure her, though no one would have dared actually touch the governor when in such a rage. "The admiral and I are far from strangers on this topic. He heads our space forces and I the infantry, and we never make a decision that is not in concert. I know this might be troubling, but you were never going to get any agreement that did not involve the both of us, so is it not just better to start with two rather than wasting your precious time speaking to one after the other?"

"You are here to out-manoeuvre the Praetor are you not?" Nelson asked. "Trust me, there is no love lost between myself and that milk-boned sack of shit. These are my boats; you'll find not a single leak in all five of them!" He laughed, holding his hand in an old Legion gesture of goodwill.

Xiao shook her head. Were this another bureaucrat with whom she had been negotiating, this clearly would have been a move to unsettle and isolate her so they could find her easier to extract concessions. Instead, it seemed these two were merely ignorant old military types, people more caught up with efficiency than the delicate ebb and flow of realpolitik. It was uncomfortable, for certain, but, sensing no real animus from them, it was not unforgiveable.

The lady dropped her steely demeanour just enough to shake the admiral's outstretched hand, even conjuring the energy for a grisly contorted grin.

Although initially Nelson's face was warmed with a large and genuine smile in response, he was quickly overtaken by a look of concern. "Your hand is shaking, your excellency." He made a nervous laugh. "Too much caffeine in Zheng's tea earlier?"

Xiao retracted her hand and examined it. Her fingers were rattling and shaking about like wind chimes through a tempest. Pausing, she felt also her heart as it picked up its already racing tempo, remembering how her emotions had been running so unchecked all day. Then, just as a certain dizziness and nausea seemed to straying into the edges of her consciousness, the realization finally struck her.

She had been ten hours on this frigate already, and all her opium was still stashed with Ilya on her private vessel. The situation would have piqued the anxiety of nearly anyone, but for the governor, her own dependency was amplifying the problem, fogging her mind and numbing the senses, causing her an irritability and emotional stability she had not known since adolescence. She was, in other words, in a state of withdrawal.

"We are quite well. Just not much sleep of late." There was little dishonesty in that, and Ci took a seat beside the admiral before any more of her condition could reveal itself. She only hoped now her makeup would conceal the paling of her face as a felt a pit form deep into the swirling, unpleasant morass of her stomach.

"So," the governor winced as she spoke, not quite certain how to initiate the proceedings, "You two spoke somehow about our problems with the woman Pan Quentin?"

Wu nodded as he sat himself behind his desk. "I passed a message onto Nelson the instant I heard it and asked him to come here immediately. Politics aside (and I hope you will forgive me if I suggest that my first concern is not to preservation of barbarian races) neither of us can possibly abide inviting a mutineer to our ranks."

"A woman mutineer, especially!" Nelson practically guffawed at that.

Xiao gritted her teeth. So, these were her allies. They could not care less about what Pan had or had not done. As the senior ranking officers of the Praetor's staff, and they just had the most to lose with the addition of a new commander. The fact that a woman might be threatening their position, that only made them the more incensed. The governor clenched her hands tightly around her ever sickening stomach.

"What can we do about her?" Ci asked. "Zheng already told me she is going to be transferred to the mobile legion on this fleet. She's undoubtedly already on her way here now."

"That is probably why it is best to talk to both of us together to settle your mind, your excellency," Wu grinned.

"Neither of us has been all that impressed with the performance of our Praetor these past few months on our voyage to and from moons of Baetica," the admiral picked up, "and so, given what we viewed was the strong possibility of the brown one getting a little over his head, creating a problem that only we could solve, we devised something of a failsafe."

"Gentlemen," Xiao bit her tongue as she tried her hardest not to roll her eyes at the men's theatrics, "for the sake of clarity, we would ask you to become slightly more specific."

The two officers shot each other a glance, each looking at the other in a somewhat imploring fashion before finally shrugging and turning back to the governor. It was the commandant who first broke the silence.

"Nelson and I have assembled a core of officers, both from the ships and legions alike, loyal and dependable men who are ready and willing to jump into action at any moment. Men, who," he breathed in deeply, the breath lingering for some time before it was exhaled, "who will follow out any order we give them, no matter if the Praetor contradicts us."

Lady Ci nodded. It was a weighty confession indeed, but not one that necessarily surprised her. The Legion was prone to such behaviour, and the weak-willed, political sycophants the Central Imperial Committee appointed to oversee them, the professional rump-kissers like Zheng, they always allowed such schemes to proliferate without ever much noticing or understanding them. This time, however, she would just need to work the Legion's treacherous nature in her favour.

"Zheng said Pan's messages had penetrated pretty far," she questioned. "In a choice between her or you, are you two absolutely certain this cadre will support you?"

"We are sure, yes." The commandant clasped his fingers together, whirling in his chair as the motion only further nauseated the frail woman. "But we can go further. We can guarantee it! We will have our officers watch this Pan as closely as one can be watched, and the very instant she even contemplates forming a conspiracy-."

He drew a finger across his throat, indicating the cut of a knife. "Satisfied?"

"I'll say I'm most pleased!" Nelson blurted out, as if Wu's question had been in any way directed at him.

Xiao scoffed. "And what of the Black Legion still left on Septimi? Can there be any move to deradicalize or else destroy them?"

Wu shifted his head from side to side, considering. "When it comes to deradicalizing, that is hardly my area of expertise and besides, such an exercise would require a great deal of our administrative resources I would much rather devote to preparing for this war to which you alluded with Zheng."

"War!" Nelson perked up. "That was never in thy message, Sangui! The Hamites are making war on us already?"

"It appears fairly imminent," the governor responded quickly before turning back to Wu, "but what were thou saying in relation to the Black Hun-."

"Ah, yes!" the commandant snapped his fingers, interrupting the governor mid-sentence. "I think the solution here is fairly simple. It is a filthy trick we commanders pull on our undesirable officers all the time. We feign incompetence and force them into a battle they have no hope of winning. Nothing too difficult with a witless lump like Nelson at my side." The two shared a laugh.

Seeing the governor was none too amused, the commandant scratched his head, embarrassed, and continued. "But, in all seriousness, if one wants to rid themselves of a legion, any child can do that, and many a child-Emperor has. All we do is point them in a direction from which we know they will never return. With my legions' air capabilities and the Party smuggling weapons onto the planet, that will be easy enough to accomplish. We can, at any time, air drop the Black Legion where we suspect a base to be – a mission for which they would likely volunteer, being as virulently anti-Cassian as they are – and never bother to return for them."

The idea was at least enticing, but there something in the premise that intrigued her further. "Where did you hear the Party was smuggling weapons to Septimi?" Ci asked. "Did Pan ever mention this in her communication with the officer corps?"

"Pan did actually inform – or, as it turns out, misinform – us of a great deal, but, strange as it sounds, we contracted a source of our own before even arriving here, to Septimi," the commandant replied. "We found ourselves a turncoat who started selling us information just a few days ago. For now, they remained stationed on some Party ship floating around in the Cassian system, but that ship, they say, has been escorting a larger convoy under a false merchant flag back and forth from Cassia Prime to Septimi. From what we could tell, they were flagging any imperial vessels for weeks now, just looking for a buyer who would pay for their convoy's route and schedule. I am genuinely surprised they never tried to contact you or Pan first."

"Doesn't matter now," Nelson jeered. "Now that we have the location, we'll have them all blown out to hell soon anyway."

"Wait, what!" the governor raised her hands, alarmed. "The fleet has not even entered Septimi orbit, and you're already carrying out a strike against the Party."

"Not the Party, per se," Wu shook his head. "The smugglers are under a false flag, so technically, they are spies, and therefore our destroying them cannot be considering an appropriate casus belli. The Joint Chiefs and our Justice colleagues have already approved the strike. The Haruspex also foresees no issues, so you can rest assured all the proper due diligence has been completed."

"Wait!" the governor practically screamed it, unable to keep the panic from her voice. "You cannot trust the Haruspex, and you must not trust anyone who calls themselves a 'party turncoat'. Unsubstantiated information cost us two legions to a nuclear strike already. This could well imperil the fleet if we refuse to consider this more carefully."

Wu was utterly dumbstruck. "How... How can the Haruspex be wrong?"

Nelson was equally perplexed. "It predicts the future, does it not? We admirals do not use them so often, but purely from reputation I can assume there must be a misunderstanding here. You must have given it bad data, or not enough, or... something."

The governor frowned. "No, it was quite clear; we promise you. I saw the Haruspex make its prediction myself. It said if we used all our air power and two legions to capture what we thought to be Kang's nuclear weapon depot, victory would be assured. Instead, the location was revealed to be a trap, and our whole air-force and twenty thousand men were incinerated in a mere instant."

Nelson gasped. "Pan had said the legions were lost, but I had just assumed it was a euphemism..."

"I heard you repeat it with the Praetor, and I still did not believe it myself." The commandant hung his head, just grasping the weight of what had transpired on the planet below.

"I do not know what it is, but there is something," Lady Ci continued, "something about this planet, about the Vidar, about all Cassians even, something the Haruspex cannot see, that its logic cannot penetrate. So, we need to be cautious. We need to be plodding, even, take whatever time we can take and double check everything before we act."

"Easy for you to say!" The admiral asserted, annoyed. "These heavy frigates were meant to capture and hold whole solar systems from interstellar attack. The minimum effective range is just under a single light minute. As that convoy moves from Cassia Prime to Septimi, we have three hours at most to ponder before they become to close to destroy!"

Xiao knew she could not hold her innards in much longer. It was not just the withdrawal. Every conversation she held on this bloody vessel only made her want to retch all the more.

"Just, let us converse with our man on the ground," she entreated. "We have a source in the Party too. A real source. They can substantiate the tip. Three hours is enough time, we are sure. Just give us that, and we will advise whether or not to continue the strike."

The two officers bit their lips, but neither of them wished to have another debacle on their hands. "Three hours," they agreed.

"But that source had better find their answers quickly," Wu warned. "Back Home, the Party is unquestionably winning. Here, we cannot surrender an opportunity to catch the enemy unprepared, working Haruspex or not."

At this, Ci finally did roll her eyes after all. From an officer in His Majesty's Legion, she could not have expected anything less.

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"Why is the governor asking me about another Cassian smuggler trying to sell out the Party?"

Valentina shot straight up in her chair as she heard Mila's voice reverberate through the office on her personal radio. She quickly turned down the volume dial and shooed one of her cadres out of the room, not daring to hear another word until she could guarantee he was well out of earshot.

"I thought thou had been taught to never use this channel while on mission!" The chairwoman barked into the receiver. "Thou are jeopardizing not just our objectives but thy very life in calling us like this!"

"I would not make contact without any urgency, Valentina!" Mila shouted back, her voice shaking not just from signal interference but a sincere desperation in her voice. "The imperial fleet is planning to destroy what they think is a convoy of Party smugglers within the next three hours, and the governor has demanded I validate the smuggler's location as quickly as possible."

The Party chief grabbed the black dyed edges of her hair and pulled so tightly only the white skunk in the middle remained visible, its pearly gleam now exaggerated from stress and annoyance. This was not the plan at all.

It did not surprise her that the Empire was acting so quickly on the tips she had leaked to them. Judging from Mila's reports on the Legion's disfunction and rife dissension in the ranks, however, Valentina had expected there would not be enough time for news of the fleet's operation to trickle down towards the governor before it was much too late. Now, they were all but caught, and Mila, despite having no knowledge of her superior's machinations could feel it just as well as Valentina knew it herself.

"Convince her," the chairwoman pronounced, thankful to whatever a secular woman like herself could be thankful to that she was able to give such an order over the radio, rather than condemn the agent in person. "Tell her whatever thou must, invent whatever stories thou like, forge whatever documents thou can imagine, but convince her, and convince her fast, Lyudmila. The whole future of the All Cassian Party depends on it now."

"But how can I?" Mila cried back. "How many Party-smugglers-turned-informants is this governor expected to believe? She barely accepted my story as it is; now, if I suddenly come up with some mysteriously corroborating information, she'll know I'm a double agent for certain. I have to deny it, Valentina. My cover might already be in tatters as it is, but if I claim to have anything but ignorance of this other smuggler, I'll be-."

"Thou shall do as thou are directed, Lyudmila Ivanovna!" Valentina cursed into the microphone. "This is not a matter of negotiation."

"I do not care about whatever dastardly schemes thou are hatching, Valentina; this is no trivial matter to me! To even attempt to convince the governor would absolutely court my death, and there's no certainty she'll believe a word I say regardless!"

"No!" Valentina rebutted, "that is where thou are entirely incorrect, my dear. There's only one certainty here, and that is what I will certainly do to thy darling Alfred if thou refuse to obey."

There was a silence over the radio as it crackled and whizzed from the cosmic background radiation.

"Do thou understand, Mila?"

Again, just silence.

"Perhaps thou do not," Valentina mused, her face sneering. "Perhaps I had better bring this radio down to the torture chambers so that thou might hear thy beloved scream out and beg thee to comply!"

The return of the static was so harsh and so unexpected that for a moment, Valentina truly worried that Mila might call the bluff. Damn it! How could she have let Elena and the commander slip her in such a blatant fashion? And now, it was on the verge of costing her everything! All this careful planning, all this delicate manoeuvring, all the unending days and sleepless nights, all the toil and misery, was it all going to be for nothin-.

"Very well," the radio squeaked before ending the transmission.

Valentina breathed a sigh of relief as she sunk back into her seat, already exhausted with the day having only just begun. She did not allow herself to rest for long, however, and within seconds she had sat upright again, a pen in her hand scribbling down a series of random seeming letters and numbers that she would have wired to the Admiralty on Cassia Prime.

Worrying as it was, Mila's message had given her a crucial warning the chairwoman could not have otherwise received. Valentina Vladimirovna vowed to make the most of it. Though the Presidium remained deadlocked on whether or not to commence a war, she knew full well the admirals were craving a fight. Now, she finally knew exactly when one would be coming.

After she had finished the message, Valentina called in an attendant to have it transmitted to one of her most dependable allies within the fleet. When the communique was received and decoded an hour later on Cassia Prime, it read:

Immediately mobilize as many ships as possible.

War declaration expected in 20 to 40 hours.

Expect statement from Jiaren Merchant Guild shortly.

Begin drafting official Party response.

Present to Presidium before Peace Faction can organize.

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It was only natural after such a long separation that Alfred would reflect upon how much he had changed, how different that old Alfred had been upon leaving Edward in comparison to that new Alfred that was reunited with him now. And, of course, those changes had been immense. His beliefs had been shaken to their very core, his singular purpose defiled and defenestrated, and his heart been shredded and pasted together more times than he could count.

But even after all of that – after all the profound delving of his soul, the crisis of his faith and the frantic internal struggle to reattach himself to any conviction, any hope, any possibility of a better world (either in this life or afterwards) – it was still, unquestionably, Edward, his prince, his prophet, his lover, had who changed the most. Alfred, despite, everything, after all, was still a man, and Edward, undoubtedly to his chagrin at the plain, indecorous features of his new body, had become an urn.

It was an urn too, Alfred's relationship to which was not immediately apparent to him. Inside that urn was the man he had loved, the man he had followed, comforted, inspired and from whom drawn inspiration. It was a man he had clung unto and who had clung onto him, whose warmth had sheltered his heart and invigorated his soul, a man who had been a friend and brother in a childhood where Alfred would otherwise have had no one and nothing. Try as he might, he could not feel nothing towards that jar, to endure no emotion or see no ghosts and shadows of the great figure now contained within.

But this was also the man who had betrayed him, who had banished him, who had not only cast him aside but condemned half a million jiaren to the worst possible death any infidel could fear: immolation. And it had happened so suddenly, without warning, without expectation, like a vase of happy memories dangling perilously on a precipice: one moment crystalline and sparkling and the next shattered and splintered, blood sliced along its myriad sharp edges.

At least, that was how Alfred had seen it. It was why Alfred had left, why Alfred had abandoned the prophet and rushed away to save the jiaren himself. Now that he had returned to Thunorr, that he was gathering back the scattered VLF leaders who had been meandering about the North, in and out of the mountains, unsure of whether to remain together or break apart, Alfred was beginning to learn the true story.

It ignited in him nothing but sheer, inextinguishable rage.

Edward's secret was finally out, his greatest fear in life, now as he lay dead, finally realized. A few commanders with their feet placed shiftily between both Edward's and Cuthbert's camp had picked enough of the pieces together that they could now explain to Alfred what had occurred between the general and his prophet. Edward had never wanted to murder the jiaren nor banish Alfred for his refusal to do so. It had all been Cuthbert's plan, Cuthbert's ruthlessness, all pressed upon the prince by threat of blackmail.

What insidious and effective extortion it had been, for even in death, even after the commanders had invented some story about the prophet dying in a holy fire brought on by the power of his prayer, even as they began building an enormous, star-shaped mausoleum at the centre of Vihorr castle dedicated to the man, they refused to inter his ashes, refused to allow his soul rest. That, no matter what Alfred felt towards that urn now in his hands, was something he could not allow.

"This," Alfred held the clay jar above his head, high enough that all the dozens of generals assembled around him could see, "this is going to be buried, with full ceremony and honours, today!"

One the mountain-dwellers immediately shook his head, stating flatly. "That cannot happen."

"It can," Alfred replied, just as starkly and with even more resolution. "And it will."

"Do thou know what he was?" another general asked, his voice soft and cautious as he whispered, barely audibly enough that any could hear him at all, "he was a ... homosexual."

"A faggot!" shouted out another, more boldly, his face reddened and clearly prepared to launch far more invective.

"Yes," Alfred called back, heightening his volume and clenching his hands into fists. "I am well aware of it. I fucked him. Many times, in fact. More than I have ever laid with any woman."

The generals were stunned into silence, but before they had even a chance to digest that first bit of news, Alfred hurled yet more.

"And it was hardly just me, dear brothers." He waved his hands about, pointing out each man as if his hand might condemn one on the spot like the Emperor Himself. "Alwin, thou did most certainly lie with him too. Godwin, thee as well. Oh yes, Wilfred, I see thee back there too." Alfred held his hands on his hips, "why, once we punish for every instance, burn every sinner, I wonder if there will be any VLF left to fight."

"I didn't bugger no bearded ones!" shouted another of the hill-folk.

"Oh good," Alfred retorted, sarcastically. "Thou only slept with clean-shaven men. We share the same taste!"

"For shame!" cried out a group of spittle-mouthed generals, and Alfred could tell from the not insignificant numbers that were fingering their axes and swords that it was time to deescalate.

"If you think these be the hands of a sinner, I beg you look upon them," Alfred shouted as he held his arms aloft. Each and every one of his fingernails had been removed, leaving behind only blackened, pussy welts.

"If you think these be the arms of an infidel, I beg you inspect them further." He pulled up his sleeves, revealing an overgrown network of scars and bruises, pocked with visible, darkened craters of electrical and acid burns, as well as a few cuts and slices still fresh enough that they drew blood as they were exposed.

"If you think this is the heart of a demon, I beg you see it beat." Alfred pulled upon his shirt and to the shock and horror of all, not only was his chest as roughened and tortured as his arms, but just left of the centre, right across and through his ribcage, ran an abstractly cut square of surgical scar-tissue that only barely covered over his visibly pounding heart.

"Yes, my comrades," he assured, "it is just as it looks. For sixty days and nights in that dungeon, the Party struck me. They beat me. They shocked me. They violated me. They kept me alive without food, water or sleep for as long I could withstand and had the decency to train my body to survive longer and longer bouts just to amplify my anguish. They even, as you can all see, took a mechanical saw to my ribs while my eyes were forced open to watch, quite conscious to every sensation, and cut a hole around my heart so that my torturer could twist and pull and give an ever so gentle squeeze every now and then to truly awaken myself to a level of pain not even in my worst nightmares could I have imagined possible."

"And throughout all of this, my brothers - throughout every trial and tribulation, throughout all the agony and suffering, throughout all the misery and commiseration - I was offered the same deal over and over, the same escape, the same way out. I was told, again and again and again – I was told so many times that there were scarce any other words but those in my head for the whole duration of my time in that most wretched layer of Blackhell – that I all I must do for the pain to end, for the torture to cease, for this underworld to yield to paradise, was renounce my faith. That was all they asked, you understand? Renounce the prophet, forget the stars, deface my soul. That was all they ever wanted, and it was all I refused to give them."

Alfred scowled, his disfigured face cementing itself into an image so fearsome even the mightiest of beasts would tremble at its sight. Daring his audience, he roared, "so, call me a faggot; have your fill of insults and taunts. I have found peace with the Stars. I could not care less for war with you. Collect the pyre. Send me to the flames. After tribulations such as mine, I will not even feel their lick."

Alfred closed his eyes and held his head to the ceiling in a serene motion he had witnessed Edward do so often that he could copy it with near perfect accuracy, and then, he waited. No one came for him. No one moved. No one dared even say a word. They just stared, dumbstruck.

"Good," Alfred said after just enough time had passed he could open his eyes again. "So, we are agreed."

"But, what are we to do, Alfred?" pleaded one of the generals, and Alfred could see the bafflement and indecision on his face was shared by almost all in attendance.

The commander nodded, his eyes understanding but determined. "We do what our grandfathers and the first prophet first set out to accomplish, my brothers. We liberate ourselves from the rule of the Emperor."

Knowing now they were unlikely to stake him, Alfred began to walk towards his audience, pacing up and down their ranks, feeling the currents of their interest exhilarate him just as Edward had once done. "What was it that the first Old Believers wanted, that our ancestors longed for and our first prophet predestined? Was it the burning of the jiaren? No! Was it the imposition of a new state? No! Was it the banishment of sexual deviants? No! None of these, not in the slightest."

"When our forefathers severed themselves from the Vitharr ecclesiastics once and for all and the Old Believers were forced into exile, it was for one issue and one issue alone. The Walders were willing to worship at the feet of the Emperor, and we were not! That is the point of contention. That is the vision of progress. That is our one and only purpose."

"It is inevitable that as time passes, dreams fade and visions blur, and after seventy years, even our prophets began to lose their grip on this single grand intention. As you all are no doubt painfully aware now, I knew our Prince Edward better than anyone, and I can tell you there has never been anyone on earth so wracked with guilt, indecision and confusion, and there never will be again. And while I quieted and consoled him, I should have taken his, his, his ... incongruity as the sign that it was. For Edward was a prophet, he could speak to the Stars just as clearly as one at night can see them, but they were giving him a message he refused to comprehend."

"Our games that we played, whether it be flirting with the Gretwalder or siding with the Party, they were a deviation, no ... an abomination, and I curse myself for my complicity in them. I thought we could play the giants against one another, that it was harmless to pilfer from one while we also stole from another, but in the end, we merely became dependant on both. And just as the Gretwalder only used our violence to fulfil his political ends, so too did the Party help us only as far it served themselves. And make no mistake, after having given nearly every piece of myself but my very soul to that Party, I know they are every bit just as evil, just as tyrannical and just as threatening as the Emperor ever was."

"So," Alfred suddenly cast out his hand as if he had caught an invisible fish floating past him on a stream only he could see, "this is what I propose."

"First, we flee and regroup to the mountains. I know many of you find it more comfortable here, but it is undoubtable Cuthbert is coming, sooner rather than later, and we cannot possibly hold this country, especially when he might not only come with his own forces but Kang's as well."

"Though we will be in hiding, we will not remain idle, however. We still have cells t here and there throughout Vitharr, and now is not only the time to use them, but to move out our forces here, in the North, to those small pockets of support."

"It was one of those cells that found me in Vitharr and brought me back to Thunorr, and on the road as we travelled, they told me some rather intriguing tales of the Gretwalder Aeplerad. They told me of his having been miraculously brought back to life and stirring up a rebellion in the countryside. That is preciously why I asked you all to the observatory, actually, because, if you take turns eyeing this device here," Alfred pointed to the telescope leaning outside the open tower window, "you will see the rumours are true. There, behind this glass, is the city of Lundenvarr across the ocean, and though the buildings and beaches are rather faint and difficult to make out, the giant, surging crowds are absolutely unmistakable."

"Now, whether the Gretwalder is alive or not is irrelevant to me," he continued, "but what is obvious is that there has been a fracturing of Kang's cabinet, that some of his ministers and perhaps generals too are siding against him, and that has provided us with an opportunity like no other."

Alfred halted his pacing for a moment. "While I was a captive of the Party, I became aware of a new weapon, a new type of weapon, something that does not even seem possible but that even the most brilliant and dastardly within the Party fear to their very bones. It is a device they have named 'the atomic bomb,' and even though I do not truly understand how it works, I know it to be powerful beyond compare."

"In Vitharr, the Party assembled a force of jiaren far greater than any the VLF has ever even attempted to field, but they kept that army locked away in secret, underground bunkers for fear of even the possibility of an atomic attack. And, when Kang discovered one of their bunkers and threatened to launch just a single one of these 'bombs' at the Party, they relented instantly and began negotiating. Just one. That was all it took. And this man has in his possession thousands."

"Such an undertaking, it cannot be too much of a secret, especially not from all his ministers, so, I think our plan must be simple, and it must assume that at least some of the Keepers now rising against Kang, they must know the location of these weapons. So, we shall seek out these rebellions, and we will kidnap their leaders! We will have to be lucky; we might need to capture more than one, but eventually, with some time and effort, we will find that arsenal for ourselves and after that, we will not just remove the Emperor's image from every temple in Vitharr, we'll keep this planet independent from the Party and Empire alike, forever."

As Alfred surveyed the room, he could see his plan resonating where it needed to resonate. These were guerilla fighters. Running and hiding was what they had always loved and known. Holding cities was an unnatural aberration for them, and they were all too happy to find any excuse to stop. The line of commanders cycling through to the see the telescope seemed deeply impressed as well.

"Incredible!" one cooed out as he viewed the city across the ocean. "Just astounding. There are so many of them! They look like a hill of ant- AAAAAAAAAAHHH!"

The man fell over, gripping his eye as he screamed in pain. Immediately the crowd rushed back from the telescope, their palms outstretched as if they fend off the device's devilish intentions. Alfred instead ran towards the injured commander and had him open his eyelid.

After seeing no damage, it was clear the lens had merely been overexposed and shot a painful burst of light straight into his retinas. Once a healer had taken over from him, Alfred's curiosity lured himself towards the machine from which the others were rapidly exiting the room as fast as possible to escape.

Alfred switched the lens to one used during the viewing of a solar eclipse. What he saw, however, was a star of infinitely greater proportions than in any eclipse he had ever seen.

For there, right where not minutes ago Alfred had set the telescope to a view of a bustling, squalid city, a towering mass of humanity, was nothing more than a shimmering inferno, an all-consuming ball of fire. This, he realized, must be it: the power of the atomic bomb.

He quoted under his breath, simultaneously too amazed and too horrified to look away, "'This fire, this eternal flame, it wrought the Earth beneath my feet, yet in a single strike of Thor's hammer, will singe away all else to dust.'"

"Excuse me, my lord," someone tapped him on the shoulder, forcing him after some time to break his fixation on that grotesque marvel of destruction. "What is it that you see?"

Alfred stood.

"It is real, my brothers!" he announced to the line of generals now starting to timidly re-enter the room. "More real than we could ever have imagined, and Kang has used it to destroy his own city! To murder millions of his own people. He is more desperate, more despotic, more insane than we ever could have hoped for, and now, my friends, our time has ascended."

"Let us fly to the coasts! Let us search through all the wreckage: all the boats, all the survivors. We have ourselves a Gretwalder for the catching!"

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The last few months had been some of the most profitable of Song's entire life. The last thirty-six hours, however, those were likely to end up being the most profitable in history.

When the plague had first broken out in the colony and spread throughout the whole planet in only a matter of weeks, vaccines and health equipment had certainly been first on Song's list of priority procurements and sales, but the idea of actually profiting on such merchandise had seemed fairly remote. After an interstellar pandemic late in the Yuan period had all but crushed that dynasty and nearly brought the Empire to ruin only a few hundred years ago, all medical technology had been forcibly kept in the public domain. Still to this day, one of the Emperor's most scared commitments to his people was ensuring medicines, pharmaceuticals and patient care were as cheap, plentiful and accessible as possible.

To the generations born after the Yuan plague, such a policy was merely a matter of public duty, and Song had approached the insurgence of this novel Septimi virus the same way. He had found a DNA-splicing factory with extra capacity in the Tau Ceti system and secured just enough supply that himself and the nascent Jiaren Red Army would be vaccinated. Ideally, perhaps, he would have driven a harder bargain, but when he was locked in a bunker with tens of thousands of susceptible hosts, it was surely more in his interest to jab as many arms as possible first and beg for additional profits second.

It did not take long, however, for Song's fellows to surrender to their more sinister impulses and find new, innovative ways to drain the planet dry. Though Vitharr was open for trading once again, the pool of imperial merchants still operating in the Cassian system was relatively small, and they all knew one other quite well. Once the disease had spread from the colony and the first large outbreaks in Vitharr's cities were driving demand for the vaccine significantly higher, the potential spoils simply became too enormous to ignore.

Song and his compatriots had decided to organize into the Jiaren Merchant Guild: a cartel to monopolize the vaccine for the entire planet. Normally, of course, if the imperial administration had still been functioning on the planet, such oligopolies would have been very illegal. The colonial government, however, was in complete disarray, completely unable to extend its influence outside the outside the arctic mountains, and Kang had no clear concrete policies on much of anything, much less any form of serious anti-trust legislation.

Still, to avoid raising too many eyebrows back Home, the Guild formed a corporate entity, and each individual merchant sold the doses they had procured from the imperial factories to their own Septimi corporation for the standard profit of three to five percent. That satisfied the Home World pencil-pushers who would see what they wanted to see: imperial merchants selling low-cost medical equipment to a local wholesaler. Once the vaccines were on Septimi, it was the governor's jurisdiction to regulate sales, not the Emperor's, so they could not care less care less what happened at that point. Thus, the Guild happily increased prices by several thousand percent, and sold the Vidar their very lives back to them for as much silver as their purses could offer up.

The idea had not been Song's but once he saw it in action (and once he had enjoyed his share of the profits), his imagination ran wild with ever-increasingly complex schemes leveraging the premise to greater effect. The group of merchants trading with Septimi was small but the number friendly enough to the Party to secure a procurement deal with Cassia Prime was smaller still: exactly one, himself.

Vitharr barely held more than a billion people, and only a small portion would ever be able to afford even the at-cost price, much less the mark-up the Guild was demanding. The Party, on the other hand, ruled over twelve times as many people. As well, from what Song had managed to ascertain from their cadres' chattering amongst themselves, cases were popping up all across the three Cassian Inner Worlds, and the Presidium was worried. With all the cards falling into place, there was only one rational response: test their credit.

Twelve billion doses could not be made just renting a factory alone, so Song had been forced to go about the standard, bland, byzantine imperial path of establishing a new consortium on Tau Ceti to quickly buy out and retrofit a small kingdom of production facilities. Once any affair reached over a certain size, the Empire always certain to demand this. Writing down regulations on paper was though to restrict the Emperor's theoretically absolute authority, so His bureaucrats demanded their own staff be appointed to bloated corporate boards, giving them the power to steer the enterprise in whatever way best suited the public interest.

The imperial ministers, who were strictly forbidden to invest in any business ventures themselves, also monitored most zealously who received these lucrative appointments, and it was well known in such circles that all one needed to do secure such an office was find the proper man to bribe. Song and every other imperial hated it, and everyone knew it stifled even the most energetic of traders, preventing a truly great fortune from ever being compiled, but if they wanted even the smallest piece of the Empire's massive industrial capacity, they had no choice but to comply. The Emperor felt entitled to total control, and his ministers felt entitled to total wealth, so the merchants, in the end, still the lowest on the social totem pole, were left with whatever scraps they could those two left over.

Song needed the doses quickly, so this time, instead of complaining, he greased as many palms as were held out to him, avoiding as many questions as he could afford. When he set up his own Septimi wholesaler to buy the twelve billion doses from the consortium for a cost of two hundred thousand taels, the other "investors" profited more than ten percent, an exorbitant sum for the Home Empire. It did not matter in the slightest, because Song knew the Party was desperate, and there was no one else even remotely ready to fill the void.

What had met him on the ground, however, exceeded even his most fanciful of expectations. The Cassia Prime of imperial propaganda was a hellscape, a backwater, a barbarian wasteland torn apart by decades of violence and starvation, irredeemably lost to poverty and chaos, never to be rebuilt into anything resembling a coherent society ever again. And yet, as the friends and allies of Valentina toured him about their gleaming Cassian capital, he was regaled with nothing but stunningly beautiful glass towers of social housing, expansive marble palaces dedicated to the public education and governance, lush gardens of every type of flower and hedge, no matter how exotic and a giant spire so tall it reached all the way up into the vacuum of space, a sort of immensely tall elevator to shuttle vehicles in and out of orbit. The noxious clouds of industrial waste for which Cassia Prime had become so infamous had all already been expunged from the capital, and as his guides insisted most virulently and without prompting, such pollution was only a few years away from being cleared from the rest of the planet entirely.

No matter how proud the Cassians had been of their city and proving that their socialist utopia was rapidly becoming a reality, it was a terrible negotiation strategy. Song saw all the Party had to offer and came to only one conclusion; they could pay. He had bought the vaccines for two hundred thousand taels and planned to sell for around a billion. After his tour of the capital, his sights were set much, much higher.

Ever since the financial advances of the early Xia dynasty, merchants like Song had always found hard cash rather old-fashioned, preferring the easy transmissibility and protection afforded by its avant-garde cousin: debt. It had been during that dynasty when Yu the Great first set out to terraform Venus into a habitable Home World, and to fund it, his government established the longest amortizing public-private partnership in history: seven hundred years. It was a topic barely touched upon in the mandatory imperial curriculum, but Song, like every man of his class, knew it all too well, for in many ways it had become the foundation of the whole state afterwards.

The idea of holding a debt several times longer than any human lifetime had certainly been a novelty, but Yu, far from being just a famous engineering Emperor, had been something of a salesman as well. That god of marketing, Yu had convinced his investors of the Empire's stability, of its unlimited potential for growth, and, most importantly, of its sound reliance un unchanging clan structures. The assets owned by one family would remain in that family for all eternity, guaranteed, and it was a promise no Emperor, even fifty thousand years in the future, would dare break.

The Venusian project ended up being delayed by nearly a century, but when it was completed, the new real estate sold at tremendous profit, all it going to the descendants of the first investors from some eight hundred years prior. With that, the example was set, and the universe never forgot. The Empire always paid its debts, and its businesspeople and public servants would only devise larger and larger projects over longer and longer lifespans to extract as much value from that essential belief as possible.

Three dynasties later, the Emperor Qin Shi Huang would begin the Dyson Sphere with an expected completion date forty thousand years in the future. As investment and growth in the Home Worlds boomed from the construction, however, the sphere had to be pushed further and further back to accommodate new terraforming projects first in the moons of Jupiter, then Saturn and now even as far as Neptune.

The current Sphere was unlikely to be finished within anything less than a million years, and yet, it still did not matter. So long as the Empire kept growing, the basic premise that Emperor always paid his debts was still believed, and the Sphere could be expanded ever farther at will. It did not matter if this Emperor paid nothing, nor His father, nor His father, nor Their fathers for as far back as one could remember, so long as everyone knew that eventually someone would pay, they could buy and sell the debts at will, generating higher and higher value for themselves and the Empire as whole.

But here, finally, after fifty thousand years and no one coming even close to even holding a candle to the Emperor's financial might, was an entity that just might match that imperial myth. Song never doubted for a minute that the capital was anything more than an enormous Potemkin village, but that was hardly the point. It did not matter if the Party's wealth was real, only that it appeared to be real, or even less, that it would appear to Song's investors like it could appear to their investors that it was real.

If a stock was traded ten million times, it did not matter if the first nine million, nine hundred thousand and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine people thought the stock was worthless. If the ten millionth person bought it thinking it was real, the stock had value, and it would be traded. And that, that fundamental, filthy secret to how the imperial market functioned, that was undoubtedly why the envious bureaucrats and literati hated their merchant colleagues so.

Nobody was stupid enough to believe the debts would ever be paid, but everyone knew that somebody at sometime over the vast course of the Empire's history and geography would believe it, and so long as they didn't end up being the sucker, they were happy to pass the assets onto the one who would be. It was the Law of Large Numbers; the Empire was so large and would last for so long that no matter how stupid one's investment, they would always find someone stupider to buy it eventually. Song had not a care in the cosmos for financial health of the Party, he was concerned only with their image, and he knew from the minute he witnessed that giant spatial spire, it was an image he could sell.

It took a little time convincing the Party to go along with him. The whole lot of them were fiscally illiterate, so Song had spent just as much time explaining his offer to them as he did negotiating it, but eventually they understood their position. He had given them two prices: one hundred billion taels of silver, all cash and all on the same day (essentially impossible to give him, even if every mine on the planet worked overtime all dedicated to that one order) or two trillion taels worth of silver, funded by a loan which Song himself would grant, amortized with an interest of one tenth of a percent over fifty million years. The communists had not the faintest idea as to why an "evil self-serving imperialist capitalist" would give them something so precious for what they saw as essentially free, but they had been in no position to refuse him.

So, now as Song was making his way back from Cassia Prime to Septimi, his ships might be entirely empty of their cargo, but he was still likely the richest man in the history of the universe. And when one finds themselves adopting a title such as that, it is difficult not to imagine all the wondrous things such wealth might do for oneself.

First, he would refuel in Septimi and return to his ancestral Home. Septimi was becoming too dangerous, and he had extracted all he could from the planet now. He had room to take the whole Red Jiaren Army as a retinue, and with just a whiff of silver, he had no doubt he could entice them all to leave the misery of the Party bunkers and join him.

Next, he would sell his company (and the Cassian government debt it now held) on the imperial stock exchange, converting his imaginary treasure into real loot. Normally the imperial administration would ask a rather disgruntling barrage of questions as to how he acquired such debt, but he knew the Empire's financial situation was growing too dire to solicit any investigation more thorough than a rubber stamp.

Song had not been entirely apprised of the situation, but he had heard rumours of mass labour demonstrations all along the Dyson Sphere. What he knew absolutely were not rumours was the project's tumbling stock price, and since the megastructure now accounted for a good portion of the whole Empire's collective wealth, it was wreaking absolute havoc on every market in every system. Something was needed to stem the bleeding, and Song's IPO, setting records as it would, was the perfect antidote to swing the whole economy from selling back to buying. The Emperor would have no choice but to allow his company a listing, and Song would be able to use his winnings to buy whatever he wanted as everything else lingered near the bottom of the market.

With that done, the real profiting could begin. If there was one thing the Party seemed hellbent on pursuing, it was war with the Empire, and so long as one invested in the right industries, war was worth a fortune. Even if he only sold twenty or thirty percent of hia company, it would raise enough cash to corner at least some part of the military-industrial complex. He could buy every bullet foundry, every missile factory, every bauxite or platinum mine or perhaps even every Haruspex manufacturer, and the Empire would watch him do it. So long as his stock continued to rise and the workers continued to strike, no one would dare break his fiefdom apart, not when the fate of the Empire itself rested on the market keeping its upward trajectory. No, the Emperor would not merely allow him to buy up the arms industry, He might very well champion Song as he did it.

And after that, it was only a matter of choice. What would satisfy the ambitions of the dear Theodore Victor? Would he stop at just squeezing supply and dredging up every last ounce of silver the Emperor could provide? Or would he intentionally cut production, sabotage it even, let the war go on further, the Emperor drag Himself down deeper until Song might be the only one powerful enough left to replace Him? It was a long ways off to be sure but close enough to warrant a self-satisfied grin for now.

Song was rocked suddenly upright, feeling as his whole ship was buffeted wildly about from some unknown force. The merchant shot up from under the covers of his bed and ran towards the telephone, speaking directly to his captain.

"What on ea-."

"An explosion, sir," the captain explained, not even waiting for Song to finish his question. "I'll be ordering everyone to strap themselves down as we begin evasive manoeuvres. We think half the convoy or more has already been destroyed."

"Half or more!" Song shouted back, too furious and baffled even to remember to belt himself to the wall as the deck intercom was now demanding he do. "Hail the Party lead ship immediately! They expressively promised-."

The ship careened violently to starboard, shoving him to the wall. Song's anger prevented him from feeling much of anything in his bloodied knees for the moment, however, and he grabbed the receiver again, blaring, "the party promised to defend this route from pirates. I expect them to keep up their end of the bargain!"

"Sorry, my lord. The Party lead vessel has warped away."

Song was aghast.

It was a trap. It had to be. They had played him, betrayed him, convinced him he had the upper hand only to devour him now in his moment of triumph. They had gotten all that they wanted from him, and now, when it most convenient, they were leaving him for dead.

"What are our options?" He was nearly sobbing as the fear overtook him, his tears only coming faster from sheer humiliation as he lost his footing again in the ship's turn and was thrown to the floor. Still, he held the phone in a death-grip to his wailing face as he screamed, "can we escape? Can we warp? Who is attacking us? What do they want? How fast can we-."

Every question would go unanswered, and Song would ask no more.

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Zheng held the phone awkwardly to his face, his hand oddly clawed around it, committing much more effort to form than the meagre weight of the telephone warranted. With every new piece of information, he would nod very seriously, stating solemnly, "yes, I see," and squaring his jaw in a noticeable over-performance of a handsome, masculine, powerful commander. After his conversation was over, he slowly, deliberately placed the telephone back on its hook in a studied, but plodding motion, keeping his chest unnaturally straight and poised.

"Gentlemen," he announced, speaking with unmistakeable strain two octaves lower than his regular voice, "and lady." He made a curt, but uncomfortably short and informal gesture towards to the governor. "We are proud to report that some time ago the Everlasting Phoenix carried out its mission to subvert an approaching Cassian Party smuggling convoy. Long-range sensors now indicate the operation was entirely a success, with all enemy vessels entirely destroyed!"

Zheng He ended his otherwise overly serious speech with such a sudden, jarringly celebratory note that for a long, profoundly unpleasant moment, he was left the only one cheering while the rest of the room remained entirely silent. Unable to endure it for a second more, however, Ci hastily rose and began applauding, vigorously gesturing for those beside her to follow and with them, eventually the whole conference of Legion and fleet officers joined the applause. The Praetor made a valiant attempt at not letting his humiliation show as he half winced and half smiled, but his eyes begged for the clapping to end as soon as possible.

Wu, still standing against the projector wall, a map of Septimi in high relief displayed against it, soon put He out of his misery. "That is incredibly good news, your honour," he affirmed, "and an excellent predicate to our overall of reinforcing and retaking the province of Septimi over the next month."

"And now," he said, touching the screen and highlighting the map in several swathes of colour, "I will show you exactly what I mean when I say such things. As you can see here, the area in blue, which represent Vitharr Gretwalden control," he turned back to audience, "the warlord Kang's territory, in other words – is rapidly shrinking." Wu returned to the screen and zoomed in on the central continent. "We can see large patches of orange where local rebellions have broken out in recent weeks, and we have even received radioactivity alerts from our satellites indicating potential nuclear exchange. Obviously, we will continue investigating that further as well."

The Commandant pinched the screen to zoom in even farther. "Ummmm, if you take a much, much closer look, you can even make out a few splotches of red here, and here, and ... where is it? Oh! Here! These are Party cells we believe to be operating below the surface in Vitharr, and we have heard reports that the Party has radicalized certain elements of the half-breed imperial and Cassian populations into a 'Red Jiaren Army', similar to the force with which Legate Pan already engaged in the colony. That, at the moment, is an unknown factor, but as Kang's area of control continues to splinter and the Gretwalden disintegrates, we can certainly envision the potential for the Party to assert itself and attempt some sort of whole planetary takeover using these Reds as a proxy."

"Taking a larger view," Wu zoomed out again and scrolled this time to the Northern continent, "we can see most of the North, which already separated from Vitharr under the VLF, still remains shaded in yellow. That probably does give a false picture of unity, however, as our best guess is, after death of the VLF's leader Edward, various local guerilla fighters are currently fighting amongst themselves for dominance. We also have shaded the peninsula of Hellasvarr and the southern tip of the continent light blue to indicate that the general Cuthbert, the most powerful single commander of the VLF, is slowly gaining territory from this fracturing state of Thunorr. Now, it is light blue, however, because although Cuthbert is nominally serving in Kang's government, we can see from his troop deployments that he is not directly engaging any of the rebellions in Vitharr, so we can take this as reasonable evidence that the relationship between these two is fraying, perhaps drifting towards de facto independence."

Wu faced the conference again, putting his hands behind his back. "Given that we are seeing extreme violence in multiple theatres, and especially in light of those very troubling reports of potential nuclear attacks, there seems to be only one place we can safely deploy our Legions," the Commandant kept his eyes on the officers but pointed to the north pole of the projected planet, "and that is the colony. Any faction wishing to conquer and hold this planet will need the colony's industrial capacity to rebuild Septimi once all this is over, so it should be most secure from any atomic warfare. More importantly, once deployed in the colony, the Legion can very quickly complete what is, by far, our most important short-term objective: the construction of an orbital cannon."

The assembled legates and prefects let out a collective groan.

Wu shook his head. "Gentlemen, I know, I know. I understand this is not the sort of heart-racing, blood-rushing, thills of excitement for which we all joined the Legion, but ever since the foundation of our Majestic Imperial force, engineering and construction has been amongst our primary functions. And, I will remind you all, there is no victory without the orbital cannon. The IJC demanded one built all the way back in General Order 12-Shahhis-1/A, issued a year ago during the annexation of Septimi as an imperial province. This is straying into Admiral Nelson's expertise, but I must say that our frigates, while excellent in long-range operations, can be vulnerable at closer distances, especially since they are too massive to orbit very close to most planets. Only an orbital cannon can both protect from external threats as well as neutralize the enemy on the ground. Without this tool in place, we will not be able to safely mobilize our legions anywhere outside the colony, and this planet will only descend further and further into chaos."

With this, Wu walked closer to the line of wavering legates, staring straight into their faces as he spoke. "They are already nuking themselves down there. Heaven only knows how much worse things will get if we do not intervene. If you want to avoid a total disaster, a loss of life so staggeringly high it will never be forgotten for all the rest of imperial history, we need this cannon built as quickly as possible, and I have every faith you can do it."

One of the prefects sitting on the wall behind his designated legate at the table raised his hand. "And what is the timeline we will be given to complete this project?"

Wu nodded, gravely. "The Praetor, the governor and I have discussed it. The governor's previous schedule would have seen this completed with just colonial labour in roughly three months. We think with our, esteemed help, we can accelerate to have the cannon operational in three weeks."

Xiao gritted her teeth, just waiting for a wave of complaints and remonstrations to hit her, but nothing came. Instead, the legates merely nodded their heads, one after the other, all acting in an aura of professionalism and gravitas of which she had long since come to expect the opposite. Perhaps the war might just be winnable after all, she mused to herself.

"This does bring me back to my original point, however," Wu continued, "and I will invite the admiral to address you shortly, because in these next three weeks, we will be at our most vulnerable, especially when we try to bring this cannon into orbit. The original General Order had expected this Cannon to be built in space itself. Unfortunately, that was not possible without the cooperation of the local Septimi people. Instead, we intend to accelerate this project by halting the production of rockets on the surface, and instead use the tugging power of our frigates to pull the cannon into orbit."

The commandant could see a wave of concern rush over the table, and he held his hands aloft to defend himself. "Now, I do know what you're thinking, but we have modeled this, and we know that if we mount one ship to the cannon and another ship to the first frigate and probably one more ship to that one just to be safe, we can pull the cannon out of orbit without any ship falling into Septimi's gravitational well."

"It will be risky, however, and if the Party is, Heaven forbid, able to establish any sort of surface-to-space missile capacity on Vitharr, our fleet could be in mortal peril. Hence, he will need to be extremely aggressive in controlling all merchandise coming to this planet. We will continue to raid, seize and even destroy smuggling operations like this last one to prevent such a thing from happening. And with that," Wu performed a half-bow, "I will yield to our good friend Admiral Nelson who can elucidate further on our blockade efforts."

"Thank you, Sangui," his colleague smiled. "Uh, I would actually prefer just to stay seated here if that's acceptable. I did not come adorned with any dazzling presentations like our fine Commandant here. Can all see and hear me contentedly?"

The admiral hardly waited for any response at all before continuing. "Anyways, as many of you did note when while we were en route from Baetica, we did identify a Cassian military cruiser. Alarming as that was, we have known for at least some time now that the Cassians have been developing at least a modest space fighting capacity, and our latest intelligence suggests they could probably field a fleet of five or six cruisers, with frigates not expected until at least the tenth year of the current reign. The IJC also receives regular intelligence updates from Cassia Prime which are too sensitive to share here, but have been fed into their Haruspex, which still predicts that any direct conflict with Party is very remote until at least the eleventh or twelfth year of the reign; so we almost certainly will not be fighting these cruisers any time soon."

"What these cruisers have been doing is patrolling a new trade route that an organization of locally engaged traders – most of descend come from mixed Cassian and imperial heritage – known as the Jiaren Merchants Guild has established between the Tau Ceti system and Vitharr."

One the captains' hands immediately shot up at hearing this.

"Yes, Captain Valencia?"

"Sir," the captain spoke with both arms outstretched, pointing aggressively straight towards the admiral, "when you say the Party has been patrolling an interstellar trade route, can we infer that the Cassians have now developed Faster Than Light technology? Because if so, I think that would be news to everyone at this table."

There were grumbles of agreement, some even of outright surprise.

"Oh, oh, oh, I see," the admiral nodded, ferociously bobbing his head up and down. "No, I should have been more specific. I thank thee, Captain, but no, so far, to the best of our knowledge, the Party has not discovered any form of FTL drive; they are only, at this moment, patrolling the portion of the route within the Cassian system, between Baetica and Septimi. Based on our tracking data, it seemed that ship we noticed is likely close to two months away from Septimi. We made the same trip in about eleven days, so, while they are undoubtedly getting faster, we still enjoy a definite advantage and will have it for some time."

"Regardless, though," Nelson continued, "there are a not insignificant number of merchant vessels passing through this trade corridor everyday, and even though most are likely legitimate businesspeople, we do know from our Party sources now that many are flying false merchant flags, smuggling weapons and ammunition to the surface. As such, if we are going to prevent the Cassians from developing any strategic foothold on the planet that could threaten our fleet, I am recommending that our frigates stop and hold every single ship travelling on this route at least until the orbital cannon is operational."

Zheng's visage was instantly wracked by a flight of nerves. "We have a question," his voice squeaked as he asked. "Of course, we wish as much as possible to prevent future smuggling operations by the Party, but such a blanket action," he grimaced, "it stirs up some troubling legal implications for us."

The admiral shrugged. "I do fully recognize your concerns, Praetor, and, having presaged such concerns, I asked Zhudi from the Justice Ministry to join our discussion on the line from the Preternatural Fire to answer those specific questions."

Nelson signalled a footmen standing next to a bank of telephones. "Zhudi," he asked, "are thou there?"

There was silence.

"Zhudi? Can thou hear us?"

Again nothing.

The footmen began shouting into the telephone directly, "Preternatural Fire, this is Eternal Phoenix, please respond. Preternatural Fire, this is Eternal Phoenix, please respond. Preternatural Fire, this is...."

The admiral waved away the chaos. "No matter, Praetor. As I wanted to say, anyways, my office did consult our legal team, and it does seem that this operation would-."

Suddenly, a disembodied woman's voice began to echo in ear-bleedingly loud volume all throughout the conference room. "Hello. This is Grey Zhudi, from the Preternatural Fire. Can you hear me, Eternal Phoenix?"

"Yes, we can hear thee, Zhudi," Nelson admitted, gripping his pained ear in one hand and signalling with the other for the attendant to lower the sound. "Please, little sister, the floor is thine."

"Yes, so, regarding your plan to detain all merchandise currently directed towards Septimi for a period of three weeks - right? Three weeks. it was?" the lawyer began. "I, actually, would recommend not mentioning the Party at all in the order you will eventually issue to the Merchants Guild. Instead, the law is much stronger in granting rights exemptions when it comes to combating material support to terrorism. Since the VLF is a Designated Terrorist Organization still very much operational on Septimi, therefore, a plausible argument can be made that some of the goods entering Vitharr's port could indeed support the development of weapons or military logistics for that organization. This means, in essence, it is fully within Governor Ci's rights, as the highest civilian power of the province, to declare by edict that all merchant vessels will be detained indefinitely to prevent the VLF materially benefiting from that trade."

"As I mentioned, is important that Her Excellency, the governor issues this order, not any military authority. If it is a military order, the Praetor, as the highest military tribunal, would be duty bound to issue an injunction. Why? Well, likely the merchants will appeal, and they can plausibly prove, given the humanitarian crisis unfolding on Septimi, that there are compelling reasons to halt the order while their appeals winds through the courts. They would argue there will be irreversible damage done to their businesses and the people of Septimi if all trade halts during their appeal, and thus demand a temporary stay while the order is adjudicated. His Honour, the Praetor, can certainly still choose not to issue such a stay, but that will invite undue and unnecessary reputational risk."

"If the governor issues the order, however, the merchants will still move all the same appeals, and the Praetor, as a strictly military official, will not be able to intervene in the civil actions. Because this system has no Court of Imperial Bench that can supersede the governor's tribunal authority, the guild will need to appeal in Tau Ceti, and that will take at least a month, even for the court to issue an emergency injunction. Since, I am told, you only need three weeks, that will be enough time to fulfil your objectives before you are ordered to release the merchants."

Zheng seemed satisfied with the answer, but he still lifted his chin towards the speakers, asking, "in terms of a less intrusive, search and seizure regime, where we only detain these merchants for a few hours to inspect their cargo," every single legionnaire nearly scowled at this suggestion, "would that engender any fewer legal-."

A red ribbon began flashing alarmingly all along the top of the conference room near the ceiling, as the lawyer's channel was cut, replaced with a severe male voice demanding, "captain to the bridge. Captain to the bridge."

Nelson finally stood, shouting, "captains, return to your vessels."

The commandant stood immediately after, "officers, to ready stations!"

Not waiting another minute, the commandant and admiral began manning the telephone lines, screaming and barking from one phone to another as they quickly gathered every iota of information they could find. It was not until everyone else besides the governor and Praetor had filed out, however, before either of them reported back.

"Seems to just be an early alarm from a source on Cassia Prime," the commandant said, "possible mobilization of the Cassian space fleet."

"What does that mean?" Zheng asked, allowing an exhausted hysteria to quickly flood over his eyes. "Possible mobilization?"

"We are sending our further scans now, Praetor," Nelson tried to assuage him. "Just as a precaution, we think we should prepare our own fleet for imminent attack."

Zheng bit his lips, his whole face quickly growing pale. "Certainly. Whatever you think is best."

The ship's intercom buzzed overhead. "Praetor! Governor! Your Excellencies! An urgent message from the 'Jiaren Merchants Guild' is now awaiting you."

"Print it off here," Xiao commanded, walking over to the wall as a little slot within it began spitting out a small strip of paper.

Lady Ci pulled the page from the mouth of the printer, breaking it off the roll, and quickly scanned the document. She did not like what she found.

"What... What is it?" Zheng asked, trying to read over her shoulder.

"The smugglers we destroyed," she replied, her eyes never leaving that damning letter for more than a microsecond, "the Guild is claiming they were not smugglers at all, but legitimate merchants. They say we killed – I am not certain, but I think it was their leader – a man named Song. They are now asking the Cassian government to intervene and guarantee the safety of their trade route."

"May God steal their unworthy souls," He cursed. The Praetor fell into his seat, his breathing growing heavier and more belaboured. "Is this at all related to the movement on Cassia Prime?"

The governor scowled. "If it is, then this must have been coordinated beforehand. Based on the timestamp of the letter, going at the speed of light, the Cassians will not even receive this message for another four or five minutes."

Just as she was about to pace, a single thought stopped Ci dead in her tracks. "Shit!" So, it had all been an act after all. She quickly tore out her personal notepad and wrote, detain Ethel ASAP.

Admiral Nelson, still holding a phone to his head, his face now growing far more worried, turned back to Zheng. The Praetor, who was just about to interrogate Xiao about her own behaviour was thrust once more to his officers.

"We have confirmation from Cassia Prime," Nelson proclaimed, his every expression now fixed in cold, emotionless concrete. "The Party fleet is launching."

Zheng could not have been more a contrast to the cool, collected manner of his commanders. "How many?" he asked, sweat already beginning to pool around his thin, grey hairline, his chest heaving to near hyper-ventilation. "Four? ... Five? ... Six ships? How many!"

The admiral put his ear to receiver, turned his back on the Praetor and spoke softly into the telephone, covering his mouth so that he could not be heard, though it was obvious he was repeating the same phrase over and over again, with increasing levels of franticness. Nelson signalled the commandant to huddle next to him too, and they plotted in some private conversation, seemingly ignorant to Zheng shaking, speechless and steadily losing his wits, behind them.

It was not until the governor spoke up and demanded, "what is this, gentlemen! Nelson, will thou answer the Praetor or not?"

The admiral turned painfully slowly back towards them, his face now just as white as the Praetor.

"Seventy, sir. That is how many."

"Seventy."