For Mila, the flight to the Eternal Phoenix had been nothing less than a march to the gallows.

When Pan had summoned the trusted "Centurion Chen" to accompany her on becoming chief of the fleet's mobile legion, Lyudmila had felt every molecule of her being begging to flee. The governor was still present on the Praetor's flagship, and Mila knew - she had absolutely no doubt - that the lady Ci had already uncovered her deceptions. It had just become too unlikely, too convenient, too unbelievable; Mila could feel every word passing her lips land like a personal insult to the governor's intelligence.

Still, though escaping might save her life, the prospects of such a life had seemed too dim even to contemplate. Could she really abandon the mission, abandon Alfred, abandon hope all for the sake of something as petty as survival? That was harder to believe than any lies concerning turncoat Party smugglers, so she had swallowed ever ounce of dread and spun the tale Valentina had told her. And, after that, she had boarded the transport with Pan just as easily, watching as Zheng's legions made the opposite voyage, touching down on Septimi as she ascended to the stars, likely for the last time.

Once begun, she could not but finish.

Despairing as a journey towards certain doom might seem, laying eyes upon the beautiful monstrosity that was the Eternal Phoenix proved to be something of a consolation.

Ever since the erection of the space elevator, Cassians ships had grown more unwieldly, less aerodynamic and separating rapidly from any notion of symmetry, but imperial frigates, having been wholly assembled in space, surrendered entirely to the frictionless, unlimited potential of the void. These ships were little more than floating cities, clusters of towers and tenements, mountains and valleys, orbs and rectangles: giant, cancerous lumps devoid of all structural cohesion or architectural control.

The only thing that ever likened two frigates together was their shared central node, an ancient nexus whose design it was rumoured had not changed since the earliest days of the Empire. These nodes would hover through space, for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years, collecting new modules whenever their captain needed a new component to achieve his mission. These tumorous collections of chaos would sprout randomly, adding new weapons, new cabins, new engines, new cargo, new anything whenever it was deemed necessary, though never once, likely in all their history, would they ever shed even those components which had so evidently long since outlasted their utility.

The frigate merely sprawled and sprawled, the vast majority of their decks becoming empty, pointless, everyone having long-forgotten why the modules were there or what purpose they were meant to serve. All that was known was that someone at some time had decided upon their addition, and now that every subsequent component relied upon it for connection to the central node, it was far too late to remove the most redundant modules now. The vessels, then, through their nearly endless voyages throughout imperial space, soon encapsulated in their very design the Empire's core ethos.

For Mila, however, when she stared past the mechanical madness Party propaganda had taught her to see so well, she glimpsed more than some metaphor for an evil empire sputtering on its last legs; she found herself almost admiring the grandiosity of that human achievement. As she came closer and closer to docking, the viewport filled more and more with the unending image of welds and rivets, ducts and exhaust pipes, plexiglass and shimmering energy fields, and betwixt it all, a haze of twinkling lights.

The vacuum was aglow every colour and level of intensity. It was a dazzling display, like a nebula, a cosmic cradle of a myriad baby stars awash in a background of gleaming greens, deep azures, bleeding pinks and velvety reds. In that glorious, nearly other-worldly haze, that ship, far from being just single dot in an otherwise overwhelming galaxy, became a whole galaxy unto itself.

It was a picture Mila would keep in her mind even as she was brought almost instantly to the Phoenix's brig. Her stay aboard the flagship had barely lasted just long enough for her to be processed and credentialed before being detained and interrogated immediately afterwards.

That had not been a surprise, nor had Mila been all that confused when she was met in her cell with two men in plain, greyish, tightfitting but cheap clothing. They wore no insignia, carried no markings, and they covered their faces with black balaclavas to protect their anonymity, but there was no hiding what they were. They worked for the imperial intelligence, and they had brought enough blood-crusted tools of the trade that no one could have possibly guessed otherwise. What had been surprising, however, was when the governor herself had stormed in, dismissing the plain-clad officers before whatever tortured they had planned had even begun.

"Out!" she squawked at them, fluttering her hands about as if she fully expected to come to blows, "immediately!"

"Your excellency-" one of the men tried to respond, the two of them peering frantically back and forth, unsure what to do.

"No!" Ci was forthright. "This is our prisoner, and we will decide how she is treated. We do not care what operation is ruined or what chain of command is broken. We will not see you troglodytes ruin our best asset before we have so much as had one conversation. There is only one man in this whole, flea-ridden fleet who outranks us, and until such time as Zheng personally decides to remove us from this cell, we will interrogate the prisoner as we and we alone see fit. Now, out!"

The governor remained by the door, seething, her chest heaving up and down in heavy, pronounced motions, her patience seemingly dangling by less than a thread. It was not until the two men had left, choosing wisely to vacate rather than oppose the woman's scorn, that Xiao allowed her body to collapse back into the hobbled, tiny figure she dared not reveal to anyone else.

Though Mila could not make her out perfectly behind the hissing, staticky forcefield that separated them, she could see the lady was exhausted, her whole being slumping into whatever rest it could find. The decorum and resoluteness Xiao's office required was doing nothing less, it seemed, than devouring her.

Lady Ci dragged a rattling, tin chair out and sat down as close she could before the field might begin lashing its electric tentacles out at her. At this distance, the Cassian could see her far better, and to Mila, the puffy, red circles enflaming the flesh beneath the governor's eyes appeared far less to be the evidence of sleeplessness than the remnants of tears.

As if she could hear her thoughts as they left Mila's mind, Xiao spoke in a hoarse, melancholic tone, all but confirming her theory.

"I have to say, Ethel," she began, sniffing slightly as she did so, unable to look up at the woman in front of her, "despite everything, despite the obviousness of thy betrayal, the exposure of thy lies and the sheer buffoonery of this whole situation, I still, still-."

Her voice suddenly grew much louder. "After everything, I still cannot but want thee to be telling the truth. I know not if this be some tactic all you Cassian spies learn with the Party indoctrination or if this truly is some incredible skill, some incredible fervour with which thou solely captivate in the hearts of others, but I find myself, even after all this, still staring outside my window into Heaven's gaze itself, begging thou be innocent."

Mila leaned back against the reinforced bulkhead of her cell, sliding down until she was splayed out onto the floor, never once making eye contact with the governor.

"Can thou truly have nothing to say?" the lady probed. Her words, like tiny droplets of acid, were spat out one by one, not because the governor had wanted to say them, but because she could feel them poisoning her insides if she held them in any longer. "After all thou did? Selling out the Red Army, stealing the EAGLE, messaging the fleet, how can now be the time thou choose to betray me? Your Party could have won the revolution, it could have prevented our reinforcing the planet, it could have avoided all conflict entirely, and this, this is how you choose to use your intelligence? You could have won it all without a fight, and now you are readying to fight anyway, for what? To spite us? To threaten us? To make us feel small and weak?"

The governor lifted her head, pulling her hair taut against the sides of her skull, and shouted, "Why are you doing this, Ethel? What is the point? Why is this happening? Why?"

Xiao, seeing the spy still not even so much as acknowledge she was speaking allowed the frustration to overtake her. She pulled up, grabbing her chair in the same, swinging motion and brought down its flimsy aluminium frame several times against the panel flooring, battering the ground as she cursed.

"Thou do know you cannot win, I hope?" Ci lashed out, her tone now becoming more rancorous, venomous even as she pointed her finger accusingly towards the figure crumpled behind the buzzing electricity. "You can win a battle, sure. With some luck you may just take this fleet, but it will not end the matter. Whether it is one battle or two, one fleet or one million, our Emperor will never surrender, and His people will never relent. There will always be more frigates, always be more legions, always be more ... us. We are unyielding and unforgiving, and if you think, for one moment, your people, your pitiful, pathetic, tiny-minded, three-planet infant nation can withstand the might of fifty thousand years of imperial conquest, you are all deluding yourselves."

Xiao had worked herself into a physical rage. She was walking around in unconscious circles, ranting to herself though still at a level the prisoner was sure to hear. "Thy world. Gone! We shall burn it to ashes. Thy socialist utopia. Eviscerated! We shall shred it like a stack of papers. Everyone thou ever loved, thou ever cared for, yearned for, protected or lived for, they are dead. Dead! Dead!" Ci looked straight into Ethel's eyes, spittle foaming at her mouth. "We will kill every last one of them, Ethel. I promise you that. If it comes to it, we can both be certain, absolutely none will survive."

Taking a few breaths to pause, the lady's dignity gradually returned to her, and she quickly spun her back to the Cassian, not wanting Mila to look upon the indecent passions the spy's actions had stirred within her.

She continued, standing more calmly, facing the door from where she had entered not too long ago. "The worst part is, I shall miss it, Ethel. I'll miss thee. I never doubted for a minute, never questioned for a second that our Empire was the greater of our two civilizations, but that did not mean I wanted yours to fail. I think, in many ways, perhaps, your example challenged us, it inspired us, revealed our flaws and helped us grow beyond them. No man cannot know himself without knowing any other, and no Empire can never understand its limits without the threat of another to urge it forward."

Xiao rotated again, her eyes just as intense in their pleading as they were mournful. "I liked your planet, Ethel. I truly did. Of course, I did!" She threw her hands to the ceiling. "A state where women ruled, where we were free to be who we wanted, do as we please without inviting the ceaseless, tedious, mind-numbing bullshit of the men around us. That was the promise, anyway, and I loved that promise. I did. I admit it! I loved it."

Ci laughed to herself. "Do thou know what the commandant of Cassia Prime did to me on my first day, all those many years ago, when I served him as chief of staff? Do you how that despicable, disgusting mongrel dog-fucker of a man introduced himself?"

Not even the finely gobbed, thick layers of make-up or sparkling jewels dotted about her face could hide the ugliness of the long-repressed hatred that welled within the lady at that moment. "He welcomed me into his office as a secretary was visibly below his desk, fellating him. He kept her there, the whole half hour of our meeting, humiliating the both of us, making it as clear as he possibly could where exactly he believed our true place to be."

Xiao swallowed, her face softening for just a moment. "But, despite everything, despite that and any number of other abuses I endured in the Legion, I persisted. And I changed it! Little by little, baby-step by painstaking baby-step, but it changed around me, around us. I, a woman of all things, became an imperial minister. My friend Zheng, he became a legate, now a Praetor, the highest rank any barbarian has ever achieved. We were winning, Ethel! We were winning, and now everything is threatened."

The governor returned as close as she could again, crouching so she could speak directly to Mila. "It's all ephemeral, Ethel, all evaporating. All our progress. All our victories. When war comes, they can fade away in a single instant. War brings out the worst in all of us, Ethel, the absolute worst. Those same aggressively masculine, violent, unthinking, genocidal¸ dangerous men, those compressing gas cannisters of men we have pushed back and held down, they'll explode and fire up right back to the surface, Ethel. They will thrust themselves to the very top the second war is declared, and they will never allow themselves to be brought down again."

She clasped her hands, a nervous energy washing about her as she began speaking faster and faster. "We have to stop this, Ethel. We, thou and I as one, we must stop this together. We have no choice. Tell me something about those ships, Ethel. Please, I beg thee! Do not allow all the progress we have made be in vain! Tell us of those ships? Are they real? Are they cruisers, frigates, fishing boats? Do you mean war or not? Tell us, Ethel, please! I beg thee. Let us end this conflict before it starts."

The governor was crying now, desperate tears forging dark, bleeding trails down her maquillage. "Please, Ethel! I'm begging thee! Do not let them win! Do not let them win!"

The governor waited, still crouching, her face creeping closer and closer to the field, keenly awaiting a response. With every second it was not forthcoming, though, her visage gradually began to shift, first from eagerness, then to revulsion, and finally to outright hostility. Sensing the unshakable Mila would not lift her eyes from the floor, Xiao tore herself up and with a single flap of her hands, send the chair behind her smashing against the opposite wall in a blow of seemingly inhuman strength.

"Know thou something?" Xiao hissed, her irises a burning, boiling, bloodshot red. "Thou are nothing but the greatest, most ignorant, most insufferable fusspot of all time. Thou call thyself a friend of women, a crusader of women. What an empty mantel!"

She flew her arm towards the force field, almost if she meant to punch it. "Thou know who suffers the most in war, who unquestionably suffers the most? Women!" Ci gripped her head, shaking it back and forth, her fingers kneading every inch of her face. "You know whose brothers, husbands and sons die leaving them destitute and alone? Women! You know who take extra shifts in the factory without pay, who are made to stretch less meat, less oil, less rice even into more meals? Women! You know who gets raped and murdered when the enemy knocks? Women!"

The governor's lips quivered as she spoke, taunting the prisoner. "How many inhabit those planets now, huh? Twelve, thirteen billion? And how many women? At least seven or eight, I am sure. Would thou see each and every one of them raped, violated, bruised and beaten, chopped up and brutalized in the most unspeakable of ways? Because that is exactly what will happen when our Legion lands on the Inner Worlds, Ethel. Thou call thyself a feminist. Is this the sort of a fate thou will consign to your sisters?"

Xiao could see the beginnings of a tempest stirring under the serenity of Mila's demeanour, but still the spy would not so much as utter a word. "Speak, thou vile worm! Thou egg! Thou infidel! Speak!"

The governor bashed her fist against the field, sparking a maelstrom of lightning and fire that burst around her, blasting the tiny woman several meters back against the exit.

Immediately, the door slammed open with Xiao's slave rushing to attend her. Mila stood too, addressing her tormentor as she slowly returned to consciousness in Ilya's caring arms.

"Thou truly will say anything, won't thou?" The Cassian inquired, an almost pitying look about her. "There are no boundaries thou will not pass nor depths to which thou cannot fall if only it means thou be given the slightest fraction of a sliver of a chance to outdo thy opponent?"

The governor tried propping herself up to reply, but Ilya kept her from speaking, brushing her forehead as Mila braved near the still flickering field to better deliver her denunciation. "Thou did appeal to me, in our first conference, thou remember? Thou did appeal to me as a woman, as fighter for our cause, a fellow in our fight, and yet, here, the instant thy vanity slips and thy true intentions revealed, thou shall threaten not just myself but woman and girl of my entire race? How dare thee, hellion. How dare thee!"

Mila's frame may have been short and unimposing, but as she bared her teeth, face engorged in profound, acerbic resentment, Ilya subtly positioned himself behind his master, instinctively wrapping around her for protection. His compatriot was a terror to behold, radiating a piercing hot aura of animalistic furor so powerful it seemed capable of surpassing the limits not just of her cell but the ship itself.

Her eyes seemed to glow a cinder white as she condemned the figure prone before her. "Have thou lost all sense of ambition, of desire, of hope? Has our species truly fallen so far, that we no longer strive for better but can now only pick the bad or the worse?"

"I am made to choose between war and surrender, rape or disrespect, death or subjugation." She shook her head, pursing her lips together as she did so. "No, I refuse. I will not be held responsible for the actions of your legions."

"Then thou betray the very people thou claim to serve!" Xiao shot back.

Mila only laughed, bitter, hollow guffaws that cut through her throat almost as painfully as it was for Ci to hear them. "Thy mind, governor, it is so twisted, so self-serving, so flexible to any sense of truth or morality, I truly cannot fathom it."

She rolled her eyes, stabbing herself in the chest with bony fingers as she pointed. "I offer my true self behind an invented name while thy name can invent any self convenience demand be offered, yet I am the liar? I will endure any hardship for the sake of my friends while thou find the enduring of friends to be an unworthy hardship, yet I am the traitor? I hold my convictions no matter their difficulties while thou will only remain convicted to what is least difficult, yet I am the hypocrite?"

"Please, Ethel...." Ci's words were breathless; the wind had been knocked out of her and she winced in terrible pain as she slid up to speak. "Do not make us use the Haruspex. Thy mind will not survive; thou will-."

"I needn't keep my mind to survive, Xiao," the agent condescended, "and that, I think, is what bothers thee most. It is why your people fear us. Why thou feel so comfortable to praise us one moment whilst wishing our annihilation the next. We believe what we say, and we act like we believe it."

"Tell thyself whatever thou want, Ethel," the governor replied, "thy sacrifice will be for naught. We will find the secre-."

Mila straightened her back and saluted, rigidly and formally, precisely in the imperial style.

"I am terribly sorry, your excellency," she said, her voice suddenly emotionless and professional, switching to perfect, crisp jiawen tones. "I do not know any 'Ethel' in here. My name is Centurion Chen Wenying, daughter of Chen Yaomen and proud Chen clan descendant of Ganymede. If you believe me not, I am happy to have my beloved Legion's Haruspex prove otherwise." She broke the salute, "as is my duty, governor."

"Ilya," Xiao spoke to the man still crouching behind her. "Help me up."

She made one last look at Mila, the Cassian's body unnaturally still, her poise completely unphased, the master of whatever fear, dread or despair might well have conquered any other in her place. Seeing her in such a way, so proud, so pristine, so disciplined in the face of absolute disaster, even after all the insults, the anger, the groveling, only one thought remained unsaid.

"What a waste."

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Cube after blasted cube - a pile of orange sand now plentiful enough to form its own beach along the intake of Xiao's pipe - was melting slowly away into those happy, mind-numbing vapours. Yet still, she needed more.

With a meeting of the command staff so soon at hand, she could ill afford the cautious approach of slowly, gently allowing the opium to lift her spirits and clear her head. With her body suffering in such immense pain, small black electrical welts seizing up and down her arm, she would not have wanted it regardless.

So, the governor smoked more, more and more still until the altercation at the brig became nothing more than a distant dream, the irritating evidence of which, etched into the surface of her flesh, silenced and forgotten. For Ilya, however, as he watched on in increasing concern at his master's indulgence, it was not a memory so easily displaced.

With the arrival of two footmen at the entrance of Lady Ci's luxury space-liner, though, he knew the time to express such worries had long since passed. Instead, he fought the hookah away from Xiao's collapsing grip as the ecstasy began to take hold, and carefully fixed the makeup around her eyes and mouth, ensuring she would present impeccably, no matter recent events.

"My lady," he asked as he laid a glittering, alternating geometric pattern of miniature diamonds, rubies and emeralds into the governor's forehead. "You are certain we will win, correct?"

Ci leaned up, her look of confusion just as attributable to her slave's words as the general malaise of the drug. "Why would thou have pause to ask such a thing?" she wondered aloud.

Ilya bit his lip, unable for a moment to meet his lady's gaze. "Your intercourse with Ethel, it was ...," he frowned, "disquieting."

Xiao smiled, a deep, warm reassurance on her lips. "We can only tell thee what we told her: that no matter what, despite all the surprise and all our tribulations, the Home Empire will ultimately prevail. We always have, Ilya, and we always will."

The slave winced, the talcum which paled his face rubbing into his eyes as he did so. "I did not ask about the Empire, my lady. I worry for us. Will we win?"

The governor just stared blankly for a moment, not quite able to form thoughts coherent enough to respond. "We... I ...."

Ilya still was not really looking down at his mistress, and so he continued to speak despite her befuddlement. "It is not some trivial matter to me, your worship. The Party, they will not abide by me. They despise men such as us. The stories I have heard of those in imperial service later captured back by Cassian agents...," he shuddered, unable to finish the sentence.

"So please, my lady, my master," he looked longingly down into her rapidly constricting pupils, "my heart. Please, tell me it will be well. Tell me we shall succeed, that we shall win!"

The woman reached out with her delicate, jewel-laden thumb and circled it around Ilya's eyes, brushing away his small tear of anxiety as her fingers flicked through his long, flowing, immaculately kept hair, tugging on it just playfully.

"Yes," she said, gently, carefully, her voice calm and serene. "We will win, Ilya. If for thee and thee alone, we will win."

Ilya held his master's hand to his face, basking in its warm, affectionate touch for as long as he could before she left him. As he did it, though, as he looked into those emptying eyes, slowly leaving the reality of the world around them and traveling to a cosmos all too entirely distinct, he found himself poisoned by that ponderous, all-consuming thought. It was a thought that no amount of stoicism, meditation or even drug-induced coma could ever fully extinguish and one which had not plagued him for some time, one which he had hoped would never cling to him again.

It was doubt.

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"Is that true, governor?"

Seated as she was, jammed claustrophobically into the corner of the conference room between Commandant Wu on her right and Nelson on her left, the whole mass of the salon seemed spread out before her. In the pleasant fog of her mind, the conference was little more than a tapestry, a portrait of assembled officers she happened to be crossing in a gallery, its lightning overly dramatic, style absurdly surreal and painter still visibly brushing away the unfinished edges. As she moved her head back and forth, weighing the artwork from different angles and new, more exciting perspectives, she also came to realize it was not merely some static oeuvre, but one of those skilful of plays of geometry where the painted eyes follow one's gaze, and new shapes, patterns and hidden symbols revealed themselves with every wayward glance.

"Your excellency, did you hear my inquiry?"

Heaven forbid it! The painting had begun to speak!

The governor found herself quite confounded. Never in her wildest fantasies had she ever imagined herself engaging in conversation with an art exhibit, but she had been bred well enough to keep her manners about her even in the most unexpected of situations. She would not allow her politesse to slip her even now.

"We must sincerely apologize," she confessed, tilting her chin downwards in a bizarrely transparent show of contrition. "Our thoughts were, sadly, momentarily directed elsewhere."

The various threads woven together on that tapestry of a ship's captain - seated only a few chairs to the left on the admiral's side - suddenly grew taut around the officer's skin, sharpening an annoyed impatience onto the contours of his face. "I was asking," he said, the mouth moving in absurd disconnection with his voice as a marionette might do, "if it were true what we have heard of you, your worship, that back on the Home Worlds, when you sat on the Central Imperial Committee, you were so wealthy you bought a palace for each of your slaves."

Xiao scoffed at this. What strange rumours these paintings passed among themselves? Perhaps it was natural, she mused. After all, what else would one do when hung in a gallery all day but invent little stories to wile away the tedious, empty hours? It was not so different than what the humans did whom looked upon them; boredom was a cage from which people would be willing to suffer or invent a great deal to escape.

"No," the woman laughed, a cheeriness engulfing her that she had nearly forgotten how to feel. "I never did. There was only one servant I ever found palatial enough for that sort of treatment." Her mind immediately flew back to Ilya, and she smiled, briefly, perhaps too short a time for anyone in the world to notice, not even herself. "Just one."

Then, as a set of doors seemed to suddenly appear against the previously flat and unmarked wall, a figure cloaked entirely in black emerged seemingly from nothing but the ether. It was then that Xiao saw something she would never have wanted to witness in any gallery on any planet in all the cosmos: Pan.

The legate entered surrounded by a host of lesser officers who took their chairs variously at the conference table or behind their prefects along the wall in accordance with rank, but everyone, no matter where they might be sitting, kept their heads tilted towards, and their eyes fixated upon, their leader.

It seemed as if the whole of the Legion had found themselves enthralled. Every ear shivered at each womanly word. An avalanche of laugher found itself released with every joke. Every story elicited nothing but admiration.

The well of anger rising up from the governor's very bowels was so powerful it broke entirely the illusion about her, forcing her tentative hands to grasp ever more tightly the unpleasant trappings of reality.

She noticed Wu furtively scribble a string of characters onto a small strip of paper and slide it over to her, and rather than merely admire the artwork, this time, she decided to retrieve the message. It was a code whose purpose she could not divine nor remember, but the governor's mind was beginning to churn at an almost unstoppable pace, and though she could not comprehend the message, once she recognized a cipher, her brain had little option left but to solve it.

The message, though still obtuse to the governor in its meaning, undoubtedly read:

Worry not; the guards are ours.

Make the signal, and they will intervene.

Ci did have long to ponder the meaning, however, for the note was still tucked between her fingers when yet another set of doors much nearer her appeared against the wall through which the Praetor stepped so absent-mindedly, one might have better said he did fall through them. Of the officers that stood to receive him, probably only half did so to salute out of decorum. The others stood for social obligation: to assist the geriatric.

Zheng had already borne his years far worse that Xiao, but the past few hours had aged him decades still more. Most of the command staff was now operating on between twenty-five to thirty hours without sleep, but their Praetor's eyes had the sag and discoloration of an insomnia that spanned months. His flesh had blemished, yellowed and spotted, and it seemed as if his body was now little more than the temporary host of a vicious parasite whose sole determination was to vacuum away every morsel of strength and vitality from his withering corpse only to latch onto its next victim at the last possible moment.

As the man slumped into a specially gilded seat at the head of the table, the commandant moved his teacup closer to the pot that had now grown cold awaiting Zheng. The Praetor stared blankly forward, his ringed, cracked, bloodshot eyes barely registering the pot nor the anxious Wu beside him.

He remained instead frozen in time, perhaps deliberately, perhaps through no volition but that of the terror that gripped them all, but no matter the cause, he was unable to move, unable to speak. Zheng just sat, hunched over, saying nothing as the whole staff returned to their chairs in silence, all trying their hardest not to stare.

None, of course, proved able to resist the temptation.

"The tea, sir," Wu whispered through clenched teeth, pushing his cup further until it had nearly scratched the Praetor's nose.

Zheng He sniffed, a heavy inhalation clogged by old nostril hair and sinuses which had taken advantage of his weakened state to infect themselves and suffocate him. He sneezed directly into his arm, wiping his face beneath the table to avoid the shame of cleaning one's self in public. It was only then that He finally took up the teapot.

The Praetor held the pot indelicately and could not muster the energy to hoist it over his head. Thankfully, he did manage to sputter a piddling, disjointed stream into the commandant's cup, and with that at least, Wu was able to retrieve the pot for himself, passing it along to the governor and everyone behind him to complete the ceremony.

"We must express some remorse," He expectorated, spewing phlegm and spittle as he spoke, raspy and barely audible. "We were unable to find the time, the situation being as it is, to inspire the poetry a conference of this magnitude would normally demand; however," he briefly unbuttoned his already sloppily arranged uniform, revealing the entirely soiled, bile-ridden collar of his undershirt while he fished into his breast pocket, withdrawing a single sheet of blank parchment.

"However," He continued, scribbling a single character on the page, "we can leave thee with a word: a plain message, true, but a clear one and one which will unite us all."

The Praetor held up his calligraphy, pulling the page taut with two hands and holding it out for the whole table to see. "'Victory,'" he read aloud, before repeating it in a slightly firmer, more convincing tone, "victory."

Pan Quentin stood up from her seat at the table – an almost unspeakable affront since the teapot had not even reached her yet – and proclaimed, in a voice infinitely more commanding than Zheng could ever have hoped to achieve, "I could not agree more, your honour, and in the service of achieving 'victory' I think it is absolutely imperative that we recognize the enemy for what they are and strike first, ensuring complete and total victory long before they are given a chance to realise any other outcome. I have developed a clear and focussed plan of attack which will-."

"Thank thee," Wu interrupted her, waving his hand for her to resume sitting. "Thy enthusiasm is noted most graciously, and we certainly will have time to discuss any variety of strategies, but for now, let us have the good admiral detail the general situation for all who might not be fully aware. All will have their comment once the tea has landed before them."

"Yes," Zheng affirmed, already scratching his cranium, visibly clutching the battle lines of his migraine. "Please, Mr. Nelson, thou have the floor."

Nelson nodded, remaining uncomfortably silent as he stared down the wayward legate, happily stretching out as much collective discomfort as possible until Pan was shamed back into sitting.

"Thank you," he finally began, standing just as a projection lit up the wall behind him in a pictographic representation of the Cassian system.

"Sixteen hours ago we were alerted that a large fleet of warships had launched from Cassia Prime. While our long-range scans have allowed to us to develop a more intimate picture of this fleet, many key questions remain unanswered." Nelson took a breath, only a hint – but a noticeable hint nonetheless – of nervousness revealing itself as he scratched the fresh prickles of his unshaven face.

"First," he continued, "we now have confirmation of the exact number of unique enemy vessels: sixty-three, which is a slight decrease from our initial estimates but still yet substantial. We also can recognize by the relative size of the ships that there must be a healthy mix of both long, short and medium range fighting capacity. There are, for example, at least twelve ships significantly more massive than the others, which we imagine could very well be ground troop transports or Cassian-designed frigates. At this moment we are still investigating both possibilities."

"Secondly, we now can be certain of their trajectory and speed. The fleet is bound currently for Cassia Secundus which they will reach in roughly ten days. Right now, we have no way of knowing if Cassia Secundus is their final destination; however, if they were trying to reach Septimi, they would be taking this identical path: using Cassia Secundus' gravitational assist to slingshot them faster towards us. If the fleet takes this course - and again, currently, we must emphasize 'if' - they would approach Spetimian orbit between twenty and twenty-two days from now."

"Finally, we have a few crucial questions that remain unanswered. This number of warships is completely discordant with our own intelligence estimates. How were the Cassians able to build so many ships without us noticing? On the other hand, assuming our first estimates were correct, are these ships even real at all, or are they using straw boats to catch our arrows? Similarly, if they are carrying twelve infantry divisions in these transports, why did we not notice any other military mobilization before the fleet launched? Are these transports empty? Are they transports at all?"

Nelson shrugged, letting out an exasperated sigh, "and, most importantly, are these ships even headed towards us at all? If they are just moving towards Cassia Secundus, why would that be? Is the reason we never noticed this before because this deployment is unique, or is it actually a common occurrence that we have always missed until now? At the moment, we have little way of illuminating ourselves, and, unfortunately, the nature of the threat ensures we must take some action before we have gathered all the information we might desire."

"Do we have any new intelligence from Cassia Prime?" one of the captains asked.

Nelson was already sitting down and only briefly interrupted his steady descent, awkwardly bending his spine, to answer, "that would be the Commandant's expertise, I'm afraid."

Wu nodded, tugging at his collar in apparent discomfort, immediately alerting the governor, even despite her stupor. "I think, as master of our logistical support operations, my Chief of Defence Staff would be best placed to answer that question."

There could be no surer sign of disaster than a superior deflecting responsibility to their subordinate, and the Chief of Staff responded with an appropriate and apparent distress.

"Ummmm," the poor man trembled, gripping his fists around the sleeves of his uniform as he turned his whole body to glance at the officers before him, conveniently neglecting to make any eye contact with his bosses. "I do believe the section head of my secure communications division is present, perhaps he would be best placed to answer."

One of the faceless golems packed tightly along the wall suddenly awoke to life. He was a short, thin, pale-skinned and patchily haired man whose head seemed weighed down by the hefty frames of his enormous square glasses. With a surprisingly invigorated energy, undoubtedly just grateful for the chance to be heard by such an esteemed collection of individuals, he strutted towards his patron's microphone, leaning awkwardly over the Chief of Staff's shoulder to speak. His eagerness to scapegoat himself, however, only belied how a man of his age had peaked at the mid-level of the Legion hierarchy, and how he was destined to remain there forever.

"Unfortunately," he began, "at this time, we have no new information since the original warning of the fleet launch. We are investigating, but we are operating on the assumption that nothing from Cassia Prime will be available for the short to medium term."

"And what exactly does that mean in number of days?" the increasing disquieted captain asked again.

The section head chuckled a bit to himself, "probably better to ask to the number of months at this point."

"Thank thee!" the Chief of Staff pushed his man aside, taking back control of the microphone. "Thank thee." He turned his head again, gesturing wildly for the section head to take his seat, but even from such a view, Xiao could make out the embarrassed anger on his face.

"What is the meaning of this?" the Praetor shouted, becoming aggressively animated as even his beleaguered, tired mind was catching up with the cataclysm unfolding about him. With all his ire directed solely the defence chief. "Do thou or thou do not have contact with our agents on Cassia Prime, mister Li?"

The Chief, in the brunt of such castigation, immediately grew stony-faced and defensive. "You have my apologies, your honour, but due to security concerns, I cannot disclose any more information at this time. I can provide a higher clearance briefing to you later at your discretion."

Xiao could see out of the corner of her eye that Wu was twitching his head, too subtly for anyone other than her to notice, but infinitely too distinctly to be nothing more than a tick of the nerves. Was it a signal of some sort? Lady Ci plunged as far back as her memory would allow her, but each time she did so, the dead wall that stopped her only came sooner and sooner. It was as if whole passageways and walking trails etched over decades into the labyrinth of her mind were being filled in with cement, confining her ever tighter, claustrophobic within her own self.

She only could watch as the Praetor grew steadily more irate, slamming the table before him in a gesture so startling it was a frightening novelty not just to the governor but all in attendance. "No! We will not accept such piddling derelictions of duty, Chief Li. We are he who determines what is classified and what is not, and if we want thee to report, thou shall report. So, tell us, and tell us now!"

The Chief of Staff paled under the withering verbal assault, Zheng's tongue having given him a better lashing than any whip could aspire to. Wu, at the same time, tugged at Xiao's sleeve, dropping any pretext to modesty, clearly desiring some action of which she had lost all memory.

"I...," Li reluctantly began, his eyes darting quickly between Nelson and the commandant, wondering who would find the courage to save him.

It was the governor, though, who finally interrupted, not knowing what to say, but knowing she clearly had to say something. "What of our diplomatic corps?" she asked, trying to steer away the topic and placate Zheng. In all her years of having known him, He had never once acted in such a way, and she wished him calm for more than merely political reasons. Even through the apathetic numbness of everything that had engulfed her, to see him like this still concerned her so.

"Is there any word from our embassy? Any statement from the Party itself?"

Everyone began to stare at her as if Xiao had been speaking some foreign language, and rather than silencing herself as she might have done in any other time, she did as her own book on politics had explicitly spelled out not to do. She continued to explain herself, digging the hole deeper.

"The situation seems not so dire as it was at first glance. If we just transmit a letter to the Cassian Presidium, clarifying firmly that any penetration of military vessels further than say... two light minutes of Septimi will be considered a declaration of war, we should scare them off. The fact they have not attacked us already would make me guess they are testing us, looking for us to move first, reveal our strengths, our weaknesses and allow them to assess whether or not they can win any conflict. We show strength now, and we can likely-."

"I am most sorry, your excellency," one of the prefects sitting near Pan broke her lumbering train of thought, "but have you not heard the Party expelled our diplomats?"

Lady Ci was beginning to prefer when this conference had been just a painting. "No," making certain to sound as indignant as possible, hoping it might convince them she had merely never been informed instead of forgotten. "When did this happen?"

"Oh!" Pan interjected from the far end of the table, a feigned self-reproach in her voice betrayed by the flash of a smile she suppressed only a moment too late. "I remember, yes. This occurred during your ... shall we say ... 'mental lapse,' your worship, while I served as governor-general. Our ambassador was recalled more than a month ago now."

Even with a perfectly still, impeccably professional demeanour, her eyes could not help but spite the lady with every word. "You must have read this in my briefing materials, surely, your excellency?" Another half-smile, and then she added, "I would have never omitted such a thing; I am most certain."

Every twinging muscle and groaning organ in the governor's body began to ache as the opiates wore away, the drugs proving unable to withstand even the smallest smidgeon of the fury that was welling within her. She knew now her faculties had returned, if only briefly, and with those at the ready, Xiao had every possible assurance the wayward legate would be leaving here in infinitely more pain than herself. That was the only thing in the universe that mattered to her now.

"Whether it was thee personally who omitted it or not, little sister," Ci returned, the term of endearment becoming invective in her mouth, "it was thy responsibility to see us informed, and thy failing we were not. We should think-."

"Enough!" the Praetor cried out, pinching his temple as he closed his frustrated eyes. "I could not care less whose fault it is or is not for you all coming to a conference sheathed in nothing by ignorance. I will ask only that one of you bloody well find the courage to tell me something worth knowing or otherwise remain silent!"

Just as the dog barked, so did he drool, and Zheng's furious face coated itself in froth as he spoke, spattering against the whole command staff who for the first time ever in this Praetor's service, felt the true crushing, humiliating weight of imperial discipline. Catching a glance between the guardsmen and the commandant, Xiao could see clearly that He's officers were not taking it well. Those glances were being shared all over the table now, but crucially not just between Wu and his lackeys, but betwixt Pan and her supporters as well.

Perhaps it was those stolen looks and secret smiles that lent Quentin the confidence to stand again, pretending to supplicate as she said, "your honour, I think our course of action is clear. We cannot reason with the barbarian. We cannot negotiate with the barbarian. Without our ambassador, we cannot even communicate with the barbarian. In the absence of all those, we are left with only one alternative: we destroy the barbarian."

No one was quite brave enough to speak their support out loud, but a few knuckles tapped on the table, lending a cowardly, "hear, hear" to her words, pressing the legate on.

"We can already perform a long-range strike, and when I was speaking with Captain Jiang earlier," she gestured outwards just as the implicated officer visibly buried his head as deep into his chest as his anatomy would allow. "He assured me that if all our frigates coordinate their strikes, we can wipe out this Cassian fleet, no matter its size."

"Our Haruspex confirmed this too!" one of the lower-level ship officers seated along the wall raised his hand to speak, though the five assembled captains and Nelson glared so coldly the man quickly lowered himself back into the comfort of anonymity.

"Thou are inventing a war for which we have no need," Wu grunted, unwilling now, to even disgrace himself with even a superficial shielding of his contempt. "We can destroy the enemy from afar, and once our cannon is in orbit, we shall defeat them in a brawl as well. The governor is right. This is nothing but a test of who will be the first to break form. The one who holds fast, who keeps their vulnerabilities hidden and strengths incalculable to the very last, will be the one who reigns victorious."

"Ha!" Quentin derided, spitting each syllable with a tone every bit as contemptuous, "the orbital cannon – at the best of estimates – shall be launched in twenty-one days, but our own admiral did say the Cassians could arrive here in twenty. Are we now to believe, after thy office did somehow misplace our spies on Cassia Prime that this project now will be not only on time, but – and this would truly be a record even in the vast, fifty-thousand year history of our noble empire – finished ahead of schedule?"

She grinned, opening her hands towards her comrades, "I did not take thee for a comedian, Mister Wu, yet here I am, unable to contain my laughter!"

The captains sniggered –fleet officers never having had the highest opinion of legionnaires even in the best of circumstances – and, this time Nelson's fearsome staring could not break the trickle of "hear, hear"s audibly vocalized throughout the salon.

"It... is ... not ... helpful!" the Praetor bellowed back, his voice so raspy it almost sounded as if the speech was drawing blood. "How are we, Pan, we with five frigates – not five hundred, not five thousand, not the five million that we would need to bury these Party curs, just five – how are going to win a war against a nation of twelve billion people?"

"Because no one is coming, Pan." He was nearly crying now, shrugging in feigned amusement as a wave of seemingly contradictory emotions rolled over him. "I receive letters from the Joint Chiefs nearly everyday; nobody is fucking coming, I can tell you all that."

He chuckled, a menacing, humourless laugh. "Heaven damn it, we might be the last expedition our Empire ever sends. What hilarity that would be, no? What hilarity!"

Wu started awkwardly grasping the Praetor's arm: half an attempt at comfort, the other half coercion. He saw the increasingly uneasy countenances about the room and knew he needed Zheng to quiet.

"The Praetor is right, legate," he deflected, "and I suggest thou hear him true. Start a war, and whether we destroy this fleet or not, in the long run, we cannot win. Thou are committing us to a long, slow, brutal struggle of unimaginable attrition which can only end in our collective deaths."

The officers seemed to all take a collective gulp.

Pan, however, remained entirely unphased. Quite to the contrary, in fact, she stood for the second time in the meeting and unfurled a brief, single paged document in her hand.

"That is quite incorrect," she announced nonchalantly, her prefects scurrying around the room to deliver copies to all at the table. Those along the wall were given only a handful to share amongst themselves, but even so, they, more than the superiors before them, seemed to salivate at what was written for them there.

"Not only am I confident we can win this engagement, your honour, I believe we have an opportunity now to win every conflict this half-wit Hamite race could ever contemplate from now until the end of time."

Ci knew she should disrupt, interrupt, merely stop her in any way she could, but her mind was just not working fast enough to interject herself. Wu and Nelson, on the other hand, they were much too fascinated by the page before them to do anything watch, curiosity wetting their eager tongues.

"I apologize for not having circulated this for comment earlier," Quentin winked at the governor. "I know how desperately our Old Iron excellency here hates surprises, but, as I am sure you can all appreciate having now seen it, we could not risk anything this sensitive leaving our presence."

"Thou really plan to kill them all?" A centurion from the sidelines inquired, more confused than offended by the question, though just by asking it he seemed to cause the whole room to all hold their breath in anticipation.

Pan only smiled. "It need not be so severe, but," she tilted her head towards the Praetor, "we can reserve the option."

Immediately a chorus of boos and table-stamping broke out at the table, though the officers along the wall still seemed mostly intrigued.

"Okay, we have all had quite enough of this!" The commandant shouted, tearing up the paper as he spoke, though it was received with much lighter fanfare than his garishly dramatic action had clearly expected.

"Let her speak!" shouted a captain from the opposite end of the table from Quentin, right across from Nelson and within easy access of his withering scowl. The captain, now, though, feeling the lower officers' support at his back, was completely unmoved.

All it took was one commander to speak before a host of subordinates along the walls began piping up as well, spattering the room with similar "let's hear her out!" and "it's just an option" and "I want to hear what she has to say."

Zheng, even as nearly everyone turned to him, only kept clasping his head, writhing and squirming in his chair as if a whole underworld of demons were about to exorcised from his shivering body. He waved their looks away, unwilling to stand against the tidal wave now.

"As you can see in the brief, my fellow commanders," Pan's teeth glimmered in sarcastic joy, "once I witnessed the outbreak of a disease that seemed particularly severe to those of Cassian heritage, I had samples of the virulent agents isolated in the colonial university's laboratories. My former colleagues there were able to evolve the virus under various controlled settings, and they have now created a whole host of strains - an asymmetric arsenal, if you will - that we can deploy at any time."

"At its most basic, all we really need is a virus that spreads quickly just sickening nearly all the enemy at once, not necessarily one that will kill them. We destroy their first fleet, use this plague to cripple their industries, bring all the Inner Worlds to a standstill, and then we can anchor our frigates right at their capital, demand whatever concessions we desire and cement our foothold on this system forever."

She twisted her head back and forth. "Should we miss, on the other hand, should we fail to destroy the ships barreling towards us – and let us make no mistake, it matters not whether they have declared war. I fought them on Septimi (you've all read it). There was no declaration then and there might not be one now; those savages will fight all the same. Regardless, should we fail," she shrugged, "we may just want a more serious deterrent."

"How serious?" Captain Jiang asked, his courage slowly returning.

"In the Cassian population?" Pan squinted, bobbling her head as though she were trying to recall the cost of rice on Alpha Centauri. "At the highest, it could kill ninety percent in about a year's time, and what would be left...." She sighed, "that would just be Heaven taking its course. No one survives a collapse like that."

Try as she might, no matter the peril she knew these ships represented to her personally and the whole imperial mission of civilization and peace throughout the cosmos, whenever she thought of the Cassians, of the "vile monsters" Pan wanted this virus to infect, Ci could never quite imagine the Party lackeys on their deadly armada. She saw only Ethel, the steadfast and resolute Ethel, still, somehow judging her from all the way down in her cell, and it clung to her like a stone at the ankles.

"Your honour, please," Xiao pleaded, though perfectly loud enough for all to hear the disgust rank throughout her voice. "How long can we entertain this... this... this open flirtation with genocide, sir?"

Quentin scoffed, refusing to sit down. Instead, she rolled her eyes and said, "exactly what I would guess from the Party Mother herself."

Xiao deemed it wiser not to dignify such an accusation with a response. She ignored Pan completely and turned entirely towards him, speaking of the legate like the tempestuous child she was, "will thou awake thyself finally and wrest control of this meeting or shall I, He?"

"Ha! Exactly!" Pan shouted back, "A signal mention of her deeds, and I am to be silenced! What coincidence!"

"Be still, legate!" Wu commanded, holding Xiao's arm, patronizingly defending her from succumbing to her womanly emotions.

The commandant, however, was quickly overwhelmed by a chorus of "What is it?" and "What did the governor do?" It was chatter, secretive and chittering, with no one willing to stand up and say it outright, but in a room of fifty or sixty people, once everyone began whispering to themselves all at once, the rumour orchestra could swell to a deafening crescendo. Pan, meanwhile, just delighted in holding the baton.

"I have it on good authority," she denounced, stabbing a finger in the air, "that it was none other than our dear governor, the Lady Ci Xiao, who funded and developed the All-Cassian Party into the tyrannical force for evil it is today."

"That's a filthy lie!" The Praetor screamed, finally breaking his unsettling silence.

"Oh, how strange!" Quentin replied, mockingly apporting a visage of feigned amazement. "How entirely unexpected. The woman who founded the Party defended by none other than the man who stood by and watched it happen."

The command staff seated about her at the conference table had nothing even approaching the governor's compunction to keeping their faces still and neutral, and many of their skins began to pale, growing gossamer white as they recollected Zheng's history. Some clearly remembered his posting on Cassia Prime, and now the pieces of the puzzle were beginning to click unpleasantly in their minds. The Praetor's own look of shock and fear only fed their growing suspicions.

In the cacophonous exchange of belligerent shouting, not all the numerous lower ranking officers had fully understood what had transpired, but now, with the testy silence that followed, the governor could hear a snake of whispers slither about the room, with scales of "the Praetor funded the Party?" and "Is Ci a double agent?" slowly sliding away from her. The slimy innards were only revealed when one of the tribunes stood up from along the wall and demanded, "I don't care who be traitor and who be not. As representative of our loyal legionnaires, I demand you all show your colours and vote to put the enemy to torch!"

Wu could not stay quiet now. "Under no circumstances will our orders be put to something as vile and outright ludicrous a vot-."

He was shouted down however by a ululation of "hear, hear!" all while the Praetor slid only lower into his chair, his whole body compressing like one were peeling away the layers of his matryoshka doll to reveal the tiniest possible form cowering at its bottom.

Nelson handed a note to the governor, though she was well aware what it said without even reading it: more of their private guards were on the way. The pressure cooker was on the cusp of explosion. She leaned again towards Zheng, trying to catch his increasingly receding ear.

"Now, I fancy that to be a rather capital idea," Pan smiled, every alligator tooth shimmering in a psychotic glee. "Why not have a vote!"

"He, please!" Xiao licked at the Praetor's ear. "She is doing exactly as I warned she would. We must remove her whilst we can!"

He could barely make eye contact. Nothing but terror filled his reddened eyes. Unable to determine whether she had been understood, the governor tried to repeat herself, but her words were made inaudible by the commandant's resounding rancour.

"It is a violation of the sacred chain of command, thou fourth generation dung thief!" Wu snarled, reddened with seething anger. "Now seat thyself, wench, before I strip thee of thy post and return thee to the pig's brothels from whence thou came!"

The commanders at the table were all too stunned to speak, a sentiment not shared by those below them. The centurions and tribunes began loudly booing the commandant, stamping their feet in furious protest. Even the prefects and captains bestride him, men who had spent the better part of the last month reading of Pan's various quests and crusades against the barbarians could not excuse such disrespect.

Quentin herself was undeterred. She only waved her arms about, speaking directly to the men against the wall now, shouting, "let us decide for ourselves, as our people did in the days of old. Virus or no! Traitor or not! Who is with us and who against!"

"Praetor!" Ci cried, begging now. "Please!"

Zheng was silent.

Nearly every officer lined against the wall began to cheer, voting one by one as enthusiastically as they had ever done.

Nelson and Wu nodded to one another, ready to strike.

The commandant turned back to the Praetor, one final perfunctory time, "your honour, I recommend we clear the room and court martial the legate as soon as possible."

Hearing that this was an option, the light returned to Zheng's face, and for a moment, it almost seemed like he might take Wu up on his offer, but then, one of the centurions who had overhead the commandant shouted out, "they mean to kill her!"

The din that rose was enormous, with nearly every lower officer leaping to their feet, clamouring with all the breath in their throat. The guards posted along the doorways began readying their weapons, and no one but the governor, Nelson and Wu seemed to pay attention as one of a single door creeped open, a whole squadron of rifle-bearing dragoons behind it.

"No one is trying to kill the legate!" Zheng cried, desperation having drained his body of any speck of colour. His speech urgent and stumbling, He tripped over his own words before he had even gotten them all out, saying, "I have not, uh... have never had, have not ever, I mean, will! will never have any fondness for the enemy. I am, I am, I am, I am ... not afraid! We shall vote! Yes.. vote! Virus or not... as the legate says it! Virus or no. Let's see your hands. All in favour?"

Not one man was given a chance to raise to their fist. Instead, the whole room feel silent as a single slap delivered onto He's cheek seemed to reverberate across the whole, endless expanse of the cosmos.

"Damn thee!" Ci cursed, clenching and unclenching her inflamed hand.

With the other hand, Xiao unfurled a note from her briefcase, and read aloud, snapping at the guards to move inside. "Praetor Zheng, by the right of military imperium granted to our person over Septimi by His Majesty, the Emperor, the 13th of Shahhis on the first year of His reign, we place you under arrest and temporarily restrain thee of all your titles.

The crowd surged in an uproar, but they were met with a wave of guards who rushed forward with their guns. Only further aroused, the mob of petty officers swarmed the entrants, and for a moment the gaggle of centurions and tribunes might have been able to overwhelm them with the sheer momentum of their anger. However, just the two forces locked into one another, the guard's sergeant withdrew his pistol and fired.

The warning shot had been dry and fired straight upwards, but it reverberated against the ship's bulkhead with a blaring, painful resonance. The line of marauding officers quickly broke, many gripping their ears, sobbing at the intensity of the vibrations that rung all the way through their skulls, jittering into their teeth.

Cowed and pushed back against the wall by the guards, all watched, then, transfixed by silent anger, as the Praetor was marched away, and the commandant and governor alike pointed their soldiers towards Quentin.

"And as for thee, Legate Pan," Lady Ci continued, barely missing a beat as she withdrew another, much heftier pre-written scroll from her briefcase. "Thy court-martial has already been concluded. Thou have been found guilty of the most heinous crimes of both war and treason. Thou are hereby sentenced to death, to be carried out immediately."

She scribbled her signature over the warrant as the commandant leaned in towards her, furious beyond nearly all recognition. "This is not what we agreed!" he whispered.

"Do you all see?" Quentin screamed out of the side of her mouth, the sergeant now pressing her head to the conference table. "She's afraid to try me in the open! Afraid to hear me speak the truth of her own-."

"Silence her," Ci commanded, waving her hand dismissively to the guard.

"Quiet, bitch!" The sergeant taunted. He slammed the handle of his gun into Pan's head, concussing her as blood poured over the polished oak.

The petty officers could hold their tongues no longer. While the others yelled him on, one charged seemingly straight for the governor, waving his centurion's club over his head, crying, "how dare you!"

A guard at her side grabbed the baton straight from the officer's hand and cracked it down, straight through his skull. Whether the blow had been intentional or merely an accident of force, once done, the man knew he could not back away from the deed now. His victim left blubbering and sputtering all manner of liquid and grey matter across the now slippery floors, it would have been crueler to stop.

And so, the guard continued to beat and beat and beat, smashing the rebel into a messy, squirming, squelching pulp. The corpse's comrades watched on in horror, seeing as the man's club – the sceptre that had always distinguished a centurion from the lowly enlisted over whom he reigned – was used to pound him back into the dirt of his lineage.

≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥≤≥≥≤≤≥

Alfred's stomach roiled as he looked upon her.

The torturer, the tormentor, the jailkeeper still to this day, she had not given up, knowingly or not, the keys to very his mind. Every time he saw that vile creature, he could feel the wormy bubblings of nausea and terror leaching into him, and always he would have no choice but to swallow them whole, suffering in silence and stillness as those rending gnats slowly ate away at him.

The symbol was too obvious, too blatant, too powerful to be ignored. If he continued to show his generals the breadth of his forgiveness, the far limits of his clemency, he knew he could win them to his side.

To them, the true believers, because Elena had never taken his soul, she had not, in actuality, exacted any true suffering onto him. It was a trifling matter of the immaterial flesh, and since that woman, for all her effort, had failed to jeopardize his eternal self, his real self, what sort of pettiness could compel him to act against her?

That was how he was expected to act, anyway. The soul must supersede the flesh; how else could one convince a single young man to strap a bomb to his chest and decimate the families of stranger, much less convince thousands? Could Alfred, as their leader, truly eschew the behaviour he expected of everyone else?

Besides, as Alfred all too cleverly surmised, the VLF commanders made some despicable errors of their - not just to the jiaren, whose famished remains were finally being freed from their wretched camps, but to Alfred and his followers personally. After they had all banished him just a few short months ago, it would be wise to sheath his vindictiveness now. To not forgive the missteps of one was to condemn the sins of all, and surely then they would rather rid themselves of any risk those sins might need be redeemed with anything more than empty words and token promises.

So, he tolerated her. He kept a watchful eye, had her guarded and well cared for, and often – given her seat at the Party's Vitharr Revolutionary Committee – even asked her counsel. None of it, no matter the acts of leniency and resolution on his part, ever filled that intolerable void Elena had carved into his very being, and in fact, every interaction only made cut it deeper.

Before setting off to chase the survivors of the devastated Lundenvarr, he quickly found himself a wife amongst the Vihorr populace. She seemed an Old Believer through and through and not just one of the locals who had played the charade of conversion to avoid too much scrutiny from VLF, all while keeping their own practices and beliefs well hidden from public view.

Alfred did not care about the woman's beliefs, per se, but after all his faith had cost him, he had lost the will to foist onto others. Belief had become a curse he would not share. So, she must believe already; that way nothing he said or did would ever impact her. The crusade in her heart would whisk away even the most implacable inklings of doubt and far from commiserating it, she would welcome the suffering of his company, for it would only purify her soul all the further.

That had been a mistake.

His wife wept each night as he refused to make love to her, refused to consummate, refused to validate her in her duties as woman. It caused her misery, and it was his own special torture – his chosen torture – to set the tent each day, lie against her soft, welcoming body and listen endlessly to her desire, her confusion, and her shame, all the while having no choice but to ignore them. It was in those moments that she begged to know why he had ever burdened her with the name of "wife".

His silence was costing her very sanity, but he could not answer. There was only ever one thought forever present on his mind.

With Elena just a few tents away, Alfred could not sleep.

Always after his wife had exhausted herself and cried away all the tears she could muster, he would wrap himself into a tiny ball at the edge of their bed and shake violently, sometimes the whole night through, while his wife soothed and comforted him, doing her best to give him just a few moments of precious peace. It was impossible to ever hope to express how much she longed for just the slightest touch of affection, the faintest word of approval, but her husband, her prophet and her beloved Stars by extension, held fast. Alfred's eyes never once glanced towards her; they were always fixed, anxious and in panic, at what – and whom – might slip its way into his tent.

Even now, sitting across from the captured Aeplerad and Edgar, finally, for the first time at the pinnacle of Vitharr politics and society, the Gretwalder himself in his grasp, it was only Elena's presence – seated along with five of Alfred's closest generals in his command ger – which seemed to hold any bearing whatsoever on his psyche.

And what an excruciating hold it was.

Though technically they had been kidnapped, the Gretwalder and his retinue had been in such woe upon their acquaintance, all but Aeplerad himself had welcomed their captors. It was only Alfred's food which could fill their starving bellies and whose tents could break against the onslaught of the fall rains: rains which for some reason tasted of ash and metal, scourging the soil it ought to nourish.

Every member of the Gretwalder's guard had either been entirely blinded or had eye-sockets now abandoned to puss and gangrene, a plethora of scabs and scars forming and bursting all across their heads. Each of them seemed to have been boiled alive, their skin red and scaly like lobsters bathed in steam. Distinct from the crustaceans, however, their hides would slowly peel off in a slimy, gooping landslide that revealed nothing but the softened, squishy skeleton below.

Edgar, the Keeper of the Scrolls, was already nearing his finale and had lost the use of nearly every limb in his body, relying solely on two VLF soldiers to carry him about Alfred's camp in an empty mead barrel, his arms and legs hanging out, all in various, visible states of irreversible decay. His body was covered in sores and blisters that puffed so much his eyes and mouth were but tiny pinpricks, and a straw had to be forcibly inserted through the festering tissue to reach his nostrils, allowing him a few more ragged, agonising breaths. The flesh had already slid off both feet and one of his hands, and one could make out little white spots of exposed bone creeping up at nearly every vertex of his body.

Despite it all, besides the Gretwalder himself, Edgar might have been in the best shape of the newcomers. None of the others were well enough to be even carried by barrel without dissolving into a liquid themselves, and Alfred was already preparing each of them for their imminent passing to paradise. Edgar would soon follow, and now, it was time to extract everything while they still could.

Aeplerad, by contrast, seemed somehow to be in the prime of his life. Not only had he somehow escaped the annihilation of Lundenvarr entirely unscathed, but far from peeling away, his skin appeared glowing and vibrantly youthful. Much like the idolatrous statues of the foreign Emperor which the VLF so abhorred, his demeanour remained serenely confident, his gaze steely and immortally aloof.

Elena had recognized the threat in him long before Alfred had seen it himself, counselling that Aeplerad be kept far away from the rank and file, and now, as he saw the way his generals looked on at the Gretwalder in sheer wonderment, Alfred understood fully the wisdom of this suggestion, even if he despised the font from whence it came.

Aeplerad had waited no more than four or five seconds after the meeting's commencement to launch into a tale of his mighty deeds in the afterlife, slaying frost giants, taming the hellhound Garmr and seducing the goddess Hel purely through the revelation of his overgrown member. Alfred might not have believed a word of it, but like any good Vidar, he could not help but find himself enthralled by any bard of such talent, and he and his generals listened with remarkable interest, swayed not only by the Gretwalder's words, but the seemingly inexplicable perfection of his flesh.

For all his charm, however, there was one among the ger he failed to fascinate, and Elena could only wait so long before her temper spoke for her.

"What idle superstitious nonsense is this, gentlemen!" she reproached. "Were I you, Gretwalder, I would be ashamed to tell such stories to all but the stupidest of infants and most degenerated of geriatrics, much less claim before men of intellect like these."

"But what of his immaculate appearance?" Alfred asked her, confounded. "What other explanation could there be but a blessing of the Stars themselves to have so spared Aeplerad when all those about them have become so horrifically afflicted?"

"Indeed," the Gretwalder assented, "there can be no better testament to our divinity than that simple fact that we have, even on this earth, beheld the holy wrath of a fallen star and survived unmolested."

Elena rolled her eyes. "Many such explanations exist, my lords. Though it be yet unknown to most of you who dwell in the mountains, imperial doctors have ways even our Party, sophisticated as it may be, does not fully understand. Supposedly, it is even said, they have the power to render onto one eternal life or else resurrect to life that which once was dead. Though it may seem magical to us, its explanations remain perfectly confined to realm of the natural."

"This man," she pointed, accusingly to the Gretwalder, "seeks to obscure this knowledge from us, and treats you all like hapless idiots, hoping that in your ignorance, he might manipulate you and reclaim his lost seat of kingly power."

"What falsity! What impish, tactless slander of our regal character!" the Gretwalder cried out. "What sort of men have you all become, shut up in your gers, secluded in your mountains all these years, that you now let foreign table-maids hold your tongues and speak nonsense about ye in dizzying circles? We may be enemies, yes, but we always at least regarded you as Vidar. Have you lost that pride now as well your senses?"

Aeplerad was more than ready to continue his tirade when a molting, bony, nearly gelatinous hand rose to his shoulder to halt him.

"Please, my lord, end the charade whilst we can," Edgar croaked, his voice a wispy, shrill wheeze easily muffled to dead silence by the tartan cloth of the tent. "Thy throne is lost in hellfire. Let us find at least one ally before our country is too burnt away."

"How dare thee!" the Gretwalder grew enraged, throwing off the hand with such contempt that the Keeper screamed out, one of his fingers torn completely from the volley. "We are the Gretwalder! We are the divine! We travelled to Blackhell and back! We slayed the-."

"Claudicatis!" Edgar bellowed, and the instant the word left his lips, Aeplerad was left entirely stupefied. He stood still, motionless, unblinking, unbreathing, a perfect statue: lifelike but unliving.

Terrified by this act of sorcery, the generals immediately began chattering nervously amongst themselves, prodding the man seated next the Gretwalder to poke and probe the frozen form, ensuring he yet lived. Tentatively, the quivering fighter reached out his hand to comply, waving it tepidly across Aeplerad's eyes and then snapping before his ears, but he elicited no reaction. Despite the hankering of his fellows, however, the general, even after screwing up the courage more than a few times, could not bring himself to touch the still body before him, lest he be cursed by the same devilish misfortune.

"My apologies," the Keeper moaned, "I should have started here, but I needed time to rebuild my...," he paused, his breathing growing more rapid, more excruciating. "My ... my ... my strength!" He sighed. "Our lord is less man than machine now, and like all machines, he can be used both for good and for ... ill."

Edgar looked on to Alfred now, two little black pupils trying frantically to escape the tumorous masses that patched the Keeper's hideous face. "I am not sure thou will use our Gretwalder well, young commander, but, having served this master all my life, I am more willing to entrust him to you than to himself alone. I know... had ... had ...," he coughed, a long string of black and red bloody mucus suctioned out of his nostril straw, "had Aeplerad been restrained like this before, perhaps none of this, this ... night-, uh..., -mare would have befallen our wretched country."

One of Alfred's generals immediately leaped from the pillow on which he sat, demanding, "the Gretwalder is possessed! It is clear. We must burn the lot of them if we are not to ransacked with the acrid evil of these demons ourselves!"

"Avast, Albert!" The commander decreed, waving his hand. "Let us hear from the Party woman before we make any claims to sorcery. Difficult as it is, we must admit we are faced with magics and technologies the likes of which we simply cannot hope to judge."

Elena shrugged. "Such an unbecoming melange of human and automaton have been documented before by our agents abroad, though they are rare and unimaginably costly in the Empire to procure. However, given we are taught from birth in the Inner Worlds to discount all superstitious beliefs of the demonic and the occult, that is the only explanation for the Gretwalder's condition I would accept, and I hope you all heed it well."

Alfred nodded, though even the smallest of accordances with that woman chilled him to his shivering cold. "Demon or not, my good sirs, we cannot burn away this man if he so controllable by but a single word. The crown sits atop his head and his alone, and if we are ever to unite this wayward state into a single, holy nation again, we need that head intact. Let us use the gift Edgar has so given us, and we can speak of exorcising this ...," he cringed, "soul-less thing after he has served all his utility to us."

That placated the general enough to return to his seat, but all the commanders all remained profoundly uncomfortable. Given the worms still crawling through Alfred's stomach himself, he knew he might need something more to settle them still.

"There is something else we wish to gather from thee, Edgar," Alfred asked, trying his best to sound soothing and respectfully, levelling the excitement from his tone as best as he could. "This 'fallen star' that destroyed Lundenvarr, it is not the only one of its kind, is it not?"

The fighters and the cadre all waited in apprehensive silence, watching closely as the scorched deformity shuddered and heaved with every struggle for air, but the Keeper seemed unmoved.

"Edgar," Alfred continued, raising himself and moving to sit beside the hemorrhoidal lump. He braved to touch the man as did so, to the shock and dismay of all else present. "I know thou might not have the highest opinion of myself and the people whom I am sworn to protect, but I do believe, that unbeknownst to either of us, we have both been working alongside each other for some time. Just like myself, thou did serve the Gretwalder in the past, and now, thy soul demands thou make amends. 'Twas I as well who killed the three Northern Walders a year ago - also as Aeplerad did will it – and I feel that same will to absolution with every breath I have taken since."

Alfred now brought his hand onto what he guessed was Edgar's neck, caressing him as gently as possible to avoid shredding any more of the poor man's desecrated skin. "We are, thou and I, responsible very much what has happened, dear Edgar, but unlike all others who may bear the blame, we are the also the only ones who seek atonement, a restoration to balance, as it were. I have a plan for this, Edgar, a plan, if thou might hear me out."

Alfred waited again, leaning in towards the brutalized Keeper, hoping to hear anything that might resemble a response, but all that could be made out was a disquieting gargle and what might be a grumbling of mild approval.

The commander shrugged and went on, "there are two things I believe thou, as Keeper of the scrolls and chief minister of the Gretwalden, do know, and we need both to succeed. First, thou guard the location of these weapons: where Kang keeps them and how they can be accessed and controlled. Second, thou must correspond with an imperial official, a 'governor' named Lady Ci Xiao."

As Alfred mentioned Ci, Edgar's eyes lit up so brightly they shone through even the bloat of his face, alighting his visage like a grotesque, skin-covered lantern. Alfred could not but notice, and he quickened his pace, exhilaration tinged in his voice, "If we sell this silo to governor, she will be sure to ransack it her legions. Perhaps she will keep one eye over her shoulder, knowing we have its location too, but what would some mountain people trouble her? Not much, I fancy."

"What the governor does not know, however..." Elena winked as he said it, and Alfred had to pause for a moment, fighting back to urge to vomit as he fought to recover his composure, "what she, umm, she does not know is that her office has been infiltrated, and not just by anyone, but by perhaps the most brilliant cadre the All Cassian Party have ever been sent afield."

Edgar was so captivated that every muscle and sinew of his face for a moment began to reconstitute itself once more into a living form. It was an energy which somehow shattered the despair and misery that had clung to him, deflating the incongruous mass and making all his show of eagerness and interest – if only for the briefest of times – recognizable for the human emotions they tried to still be.

"So far," Alfred recounted, "the Party and the Empire have never clashed directly, always choosing to fight through proxies, using our people – our blood! – as intermediaries. Now, it is time to force a combat in the open, fair, direct, and without any of our people in the crosshairs: just Kang the foreigner on side, the Empire on another and the Party on the last. The Empire will destroy Kang. The Party will then destroy the Empire. And we can watch from the sidelines and destroy whomever is left, taking the weapons and independence for ourselves!"

"Your troops," Edgar asked, speaking now almost clearly, though holding back the reservoir of strength he had left, clearly worried he might become carried away and find himself disappointed. "How many have you?"

"Ten thousand strong," one the generals answered, nodding in self-satisfaction at his reply.

The Keeper tried to nod in turn, but the muscles in his neck merely contracted and expanded a few times in a slight bulging motion. "With vehicles, you are clearly replete - lest you would not have overtaken the North so quickly - but have you any cannon to your name?"

"Many pieces," another commander reassured him.

"And the governor can furnish us with many more!" Elena cried out. Everyone derided her as she spoke, viewing her with a hostile suspicion, but Alfred waved them off and beckoned her continue. "Our agent, the one to who our lord commander did refer, she has told us of a cannon of magnificent power, a gun capable of firing great jets of – as you might call it – 'hellfire', several kilometres in length, jets of light that cut through ranks thousands deep and can route any army in an instant of its kiss. These, these 'laser cannons' are those things which we can ask the governor in exchange for the silo's true location."

"Very good!" Edgar was elated now, his voice as healthy but crackling as a schoolboy in the pinnacle of his youth. "And what of ships? Watercraft? Transports? Have you any of these?"

The more learned generals sat awkwardly quiet while another asked, "What are 'ships?'"

The general seated beside him slapped him on the head. "Those be the giant fish of metal and wood that float above the sea, remember, thou dunce. We fought them together on the south-east coast of Thunorr last year." He pointed to the still motionless Gretwalder. "'Twas that one there who brought those 'ships' upon us, if memory serves me true."

"Ohhhh, of course," the first one replied, before turning to Edgar, "I apologize for my rudeness, lord Keeper, but though my ignorance is plain to see, I do not believe we have such water beasts about us."

Edgar's form retreated back into the mushy, infected, waking carcass stuffed inside the barrel. "The silo is situated in a chain of islands along Vitharr's equator. It is at least four thousand kilometres south of here, and that is only as a bird might fly. Thus, unless we are to sprout wings and go flying with them, it seems, dreadful as it may be, we are grounded far away."

"But, it need not be so forever!" Alfred proposed, hoping to win the Keeper's spirits once more. "We sit now on a ring of coastal cities. We can always take one and acquire a fleet. We can ransom the populace if we must, set a navy as the price of peace. Is that not suitable?"

Edgar snorted through his straw. "This depends if my fate is suitable to thee or not, good Alfred." He laughed, though in his condition, it was a wheeze so haunting as to drain whatever mirth the witticism had apported in its entirety.

"The only thing now keeping you all alive is your momentum. Stop, even for a single day – and no one, not even the famed mountain raiders can take a city in but a day – and you shall be destroyed. The instant he finds you, you shall be annihilated. Kang killed twenty million in Lundenvarr to halt one revolt. He will have no qualms about doing the same to your VLF if you stop just long enough to let him."

Alfred gripped his temple, frustrated and aching. He was right, and everyone could see it. Those assembled held their heads in quiet concentration.

"My lord," one of the generals finally spoke, clearing his throat as he did so.

"Yes, Alwin?" Alfred asked, looking in up in a hopeful resurgence.

Alwin cringed. "Please do not look at me so, for I know thou shall find thyself most displeased at what I shall say."

Alfred welcomed in a long but only mildly soothing breath, tapping the wood of Edgar's barrel for good luck. "Speak. I will listen."

The general nodded several times, compulsively and in a nervous fashion, rocking himself back and forth along his pillow. "Cuthbert has following us since the very day we left the North."

Alfred immediately rose. "No, I misspoke. I will not listen after all."

Determined as he was to leave, he felt a grime-laden hand grasp his ankle and keep him locked in place.

"St... st... stay...," Edgar asked, barely able to form the words now, though struggling valiantly against himself to speak. "Li... iss ... lis – ten."

"What is it!" Alfred snapped at Alwin. "Thou had better not announce any intentions to work alongside that," his nostrils flared and teeth clenched, "that monster, that devil!"

"To whom else can we turn?" asked another. "Our scouts think he could have ten times as many as us, and a fleet of ships too!"

"It's the boats, Alfred!" someone else called out. "What else can get us the boats!"

"Not fucking Cuthbert!" their commander shouted back at them.

The generals grumbled in consternation, and Alfred found himself obliged to explain. He sat, wetting his tongue over and over to prepare itself to bear the name of that awful man one more.

"Have you all forgotten so quickly? Hmm? What brought us here? Who torn our people apart? Who brought faction against faction, incited Vidar against Jiaren, pitted brother against brother?" He choked, "forced lover against lover."

A single sniff, and then Alfred continued. "No, there must be another way. I cannot accept it. We cannot accept it. If we side with this man again, we might as well have been swept away with Lundenvarr too. Our struggle, our jihad would have not made the least lick of difference. Are we not struggling for something? Are we? Dear Stars, how can you even contemplate such a man!"

"Alfred," Elena broke in, hushing the men before they could raise too much of a clamour, "I know this will only add to my and – perhaps more sadly – women's general reputation in your culture for duplicity, but there is a piece here thou are missing."

"What say thee?" Alfred squawked, unable to maintain the façade of decency he kept towards her, his frustration having grown so high.

"Betray him," she continued, unphased. "Just as thou will the governor, so do to him. To work with him will wound, but the bleeding can be stemmed. No need to share your cannon with him. Hide them. Let him rush his troops in first, greedy to be the sole ruler of Vitharr, the first man to lay his hands on those glorious weapons, and then that wound with the heat of guns can be cauterized. It can be done." She nodded, just a slight hint of a smile creeping up, though she had moved her head as just the perfect time to obscure it. "It should be done."

"What sort of she-devil trickery is this!" screamed Alwin.

"It is dishonourable in the extreme! Burnable, I say. We should have put her to the flame ages ago, my lord!" cried another.

Edgar declared otherwise. "It's brilliant!" And that settled the debate.

"Do as she says, Alfred," Edgar commanded, twisting his mix of bulbous and skeletonized fingers to gesture him closer, "I shall only give thee the location if thou do as she says. I know Cuthbert; I despise him as much as thee, but thy men are quite correct, my lord. You shall find no ships from any else."

"And besides," he had Alfred bring his ear as close as possible so that only he might hear, "it might not be ideal, but it is exactly thy willingness to accept the un-ideal that inspires me, Alfred. We need something to piece this eggshell of a nation back together, my lord. Thou have been a hammer all thy life; before I entrust my most precious gift to thee, I ask thou try and be the glue."

With that, the meeting was adjourned, and Edgar carried out in his barrel, to be lodged as comfortably as he could for the night. Thankful as he was, despite it all, to still be dry and warm, it was the hope that comforted him the most, hope that everything might, even after all had happened, finally turn out for the better. Even if it took years, decades, centuries, even, there was still a chance, and that, was all he needed.

The five generals who left after him, however, would not come to pass the night with any such triumphal feelings.

Soon after the meeting had come to a close, Elena pulled Alfred back, and although he could barely fight back his panic at being so entrapped in a tent with her alone, he could see the urgency in her eyes. He struggled, straining against every instinct of self-preservation just to listen and not run away.

"Alfred," she began, entirely emotionless as she spoke, barely even blinking so severe was she, "our tactics are sound, but there remains a great flaw."

Alfred grunted, "spare me, Elena. It is late, and I can hear of it on tomorrow's ride."

"It is thy generals," she continued, stopping him with the seriousness of her tone even as he tried to leave.

"What of them?" he asked.

She raised an eyebrow, surprised. "Thou cannot see? They did not support the plan. They even obeyed Cuthbert before thee. With him, they will rid themselves of Alfred the very instant they are asked."

"'Treachery thy name is woman!'" Alfred cursed, turning back, only to be stopped again by Elena clenching onto his arm.

The touch rippled across every hair and nerve on his body, debilitating him, halting him no less perfectly than the magic words had set the Gretwalder to freeze. His heart began to race, and he could hear each terrifying beat pulsing in his ears.

"Some may support thee, Alfred, some, but in order for this to work," she paused, rolling her eyes in an undeniable condescension, "if we are to succeed, all must heed thee. No one can tell Cuthbert. He can have not a word. Not a peep. Not one."

"Please stop touching me," was all he could conjure in response.

"Oh, of course. My apologies." The grip was lessened immediately, and Alfred, after a short pause to regain his senses, broke himself free.

"I cannot allow thee to do what I know thou shall propose," he said, taking some long breaths between each word to make up for the oxygen he had lost to sheer terror.

"Can thou allow even the possibility that Cuthbert wins, that he reigns victorious and all the power of that arsenal be his?"

"Ahh! What treacherous game is this?" Alfred cried, kicking at the tent post, "it was thee who suggested we ally with him at all!"

"And now, I have explained how it might be done more prudently." Elena's hands hovered over his shoulders as he remained turned away from her. Perhaps she meant to reassure him, though she wisely chose to keep her fingers just above any contact.

How could he allow himself to do it? Alfred thought. He had suffered the woman's tortures. He knew the depravities of which she was capable, in which she clearly reveled. Yet the results were undeniable. The cadres, though they spent their days plotting new purges and crueler torments, never betrayed one another to the enemy.

To Alfred's fancy, their one and only failure had been himself, and even of that he was unsure. He could just as well be their greatest success: an agent so acclimated, so loyal, he himself did not even recognize he unconscious directives nor know he was secretly still at the behest of the Party itself. It certainly was possible, and that, along with nearly everything else, was just one more reason the man could never find more than torment on his pillow each night.

But could he really allow the possibility, even the slimmest, most marginal of chances, that Cuthbert might vanquish him? Cuthbert, the man who had blackmailed his prophet, slaughtered the jiaren and enslaved their women? How could the Stars allow it to happen? Hoe might the Stars look upon him if he allowed it to happen?

Was this what Edgar had meant, that only a diplomat could piece back together their country? But was he to be a negotiator merely of men or of the morals that guided them too? It was an impossible question; every solution of one demanded a compromise of the other. That was how it was and would always be, and if that was the role the Stars had destined one to play, there was nothing more to say besides "so be it." Better to know the role and play it badly than be go all of life perfectly without purpose.

"Do it," he said, allowing her finally to caress his back, "be as gentle as possible, but be as sure as possible."

"Yes.... Of course."

He nodded, and just for a moment, a single, solitary moment for which he would spend the rest of his life in eternal guilt, he felt the woman's touch on his shoulder and, rather than be repulsed and disgusted, for a single, ephemeral moment, felt reassured.

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"Well," the commandant attempted to mollify himself, but he could not escape the frustration coursing through him, "that was a calamity unparalleled in its sheer pants-pissing idiocy."

He slapped his chair before sitting down upon it, cracking his knuckles and snarling his lips as the governor took her seat behind the desk.

"Though it may be the last thing upon which we agree, on that thou will find no quarrel," Xiao returned.

"Could thou not have waited?" Nelson asked, pinching his fingers as he did so. "Just the smallest, most minute, insignificant increment of time before executing the fucking war hero?"

"Not war hero, war criminal," the governor shot back.

"The woman's worshipped, Xiao!"

She was aghast, "and that somehow justifies what she did?" The lady turned to the commandant. "Thousands in the colony: dead, raped, mutilated. Am I to hear those screaming voices, those howling please for justice all my life and never answer a single call?"

"No!" Ci slammed her fist straight into Wu's desk hard enough that both men found themselves unconsciously on the retreat, shifting their chairs just ever so slightly away from her. "That was absolutely non-negotiable. You told me, you both told me, your officers were ready, your people were prepared to be rid of her, and by Heaven's gaze, I did it. I had the strength; I had the moral fortitude. I made the decision, and I corrected the error. Be thankful and move on."

"But thou could have done so in private!" Wu whimpered, pouting behind his desk. "Now thou have implicated all of us in a deed not only lacking all honour and taste, but worst of all, support."

"Oh, may thy ancestors take pity on thy plight, Gui-gui," the lady mocked. "'Thou are implicated?' That's politics! We do nothing alone. You have made me imprison our Praetor, my friend. Should I cry for having not done so in private too?" She pursed her lips. "The blood is spilled; the least we can do is share the stains."

"No," the admiral shook his head, "cease thy obfuscations and answer, woman. We are not so fresh to this game as thou would have us pegged. We rose the ranks; we can play the cards and read the winds as well as any. We know why thou read her death warrant aloud, there in the conference room, before all the best and brightest of our officers."

His eyes narrowed, features hardening into greyish and morbidity. "Thou have no faith in us, do thou not? Thou spoke the sentence there and then to force us into alignment with thee, there and then when the coup was most unstable, when we needed to project unity the most, there and then when thou could take anything thou wanted. There and then when all thy desires laid-."

"Be mute with thee!" Xiao rolled her eyes. "Shall I award praise for an uncovering of the obvious. Not five minutes had the clock eaten of that meeting before I was bombarded with your incompetence – no, do not deign ignorance to now! I was there, humiliated, forced to babble on and distract the Praetor while you dust-laden old fools made the most transparent and empty-headed attempts to muddle whatever unforgiveable ineptitude undertook our intelligence agents on Cassia Prime!"

The two officers kept silent at that. Nelson, who also was standing across from the governor placed his hands in pockets, brooding.

"No...?" Ci asked, poking the sore spot for as long as she might need it. "Nothing to say? Nothing at all? The two greatest military and political geniuses of our time, and they can conjure up not a word?"

The commandant winced. He placed his hands upright and unfolded them like a book of flesh. "Thou could have waited to pass the vote. That is all we wanted. Just to pass the vote."

"Did thy mother make love to every lunatic in her family tree ere thy birth?" the lady scoffed. "It was thee who objected to voting on military orders in the first place. And besides, a vote on genocide? Are we really discussing this?" Her mouth seemed permanently propped open, entirely confounded.

"Is this truly a point of contention?" She shrugged, though let her hands fall limp in exhaustion. "I would have hoped with something so objectionable as that-."

Nelson tried to interject. "No one is saying it's not objectionable-."

"Then about what, by Heaven's wrath and Emperor's cock, are we talking?" Xiao was incensed. "Because after such careful planning to displace the Praetor and our meddlesome legate, I have done away with both, giving you everything you ever wanted. And now, when you two should, by all rights, be planning me a fucking parade in triumph, I am beset with feeble castigations and half-witted assertions that I somehow forced you into your very own desires!"

"All I am saying is, Xiao," Wu began as slowly and calmly as he could. He was about to continue, but he saw the tempest brewing on the lady's features and chose to withdraw, "your excellency, we had five captains, five first officers and a handful of prefects all seated around the same table, and we had the perfect opportunity to test their loyalty. We could have seen who was on our side; that is all we are saying."

"What if we had lost, Sangui?" the governor snapped. "The non-commissioned... rabble had already bullied Zheng into submission. What if the rest of the command staff had been so moved? What then? What if it had been clear we were in the minority, we were the losers, that there was no support for our coup at all? What then?"

Wu bit his lip, but Xiao only leaned in and nodded profusely, insultingly. "Yes, that is correct, Sangui. We. Would. Have. Been. Fucked!"

Lady Ci shifted back, readjusting her hair as she did. "Now, I did not come here just solely to belittle you two, and I certainly will not mop again an already soapy floor. There is something I wish to discuss and wish to discuss as equals, but I need you both to know, if this trio is to ever harmonize, we speak openly and true."

"You may have thought removing Zheng would free yourselves of oversight to your dying days, but in that you were mistaken. A rotted fish can never hide its smell, and your conduct has set my nose to itch. So, tell me, before I offer another word, or, more likely, another rebuke, what in His Majesty's name happened with our spies on Cassia?"

The two stayed mute.

Xiao grunted. "Fine, I am contented." She got up as if to leave. "I understand completely now why you two seemed all excited, passing your secret messages, holding your secret meetings," her arms swept up in a mocking gesture, "inventing your secret handshakes."

"And yet, now that the time to act is upon us, you find nothing but criticism and fault with me. Like schoolboys you clog the shower drains with your fantasies but bite your tongue the moment you so much as spot a real girl. You two are nothing more than a pair of chittering old men, two old, saggy hot-air balloons filled to the brim with talk and self-gratification and scarce little else."

Ci handled the doorknob. "I have something that now demands action, gentlemen. So, I suppose I had better find an officer with balls enough to act, or else be made to do it all myself."

"Stop!" the commandant called out, holding his aching head as he did so. "We can tell you; that's fine. Just do not leave. Not now. Stay.... Please."

"But whatever we say" Nelson stipulated, "it shall not leave this room!" He stamped his foot for emphasis.

Xiao smiled. "Simple."

She returned to her seat.

Wu let out a sigh. "When the spies on Cassia Prime first contacted our fleet," he grimaced, "the signals officer on duty at the time was not monitoring the correct frequencies, waiting to hear from them. Our spies, they saw the Cassian ships launching and knew they could not leave us unwarned, and they," his knuckles contracted, and his fingers dithered about nervously, "they sent out a much wider burst, ensuring we would hear."

"And that the Party would hear as well," Xiao finished the sentence.

The commandant bit down on the corner of his lip, saying nothing, but he gave a single, quick nod of affirmation.

Ci found herself quite impressed with her ability to keep a straight face. "I cannot pretend I am not tremendously disappointed, but I do not blame either of you directly. You have my assurances of that."

Each pretended as if this was a meaningless gesture, but Xiao could see just an ever so subtle release of air from the diaphragm and all the tension that went with it from both men.

She continued, "this is indicative of problems we have in the petty officers, however. Obviously, I am not contented with the political persuasions of the lower rank, and if we have some performance issues we can throw around to discipline and remove the rowdier centurions, all the better. From now on, any excuse to remove Pan's supporters from the ranks must be taken up as zealously as possible. We can act quietly, sure, invoking as little furor as we can, but even if we act in perfect silence, it must be swift and entirely without mercy."

The commandant nodded, gravely, "I can assure thee the officer in charge has been stripped of rank, governor."

"Fine by me," she snorted. "But I actually have much greater favours to ask of you in that regard."

"'Greater favours?'" Wu inquired, a long, bushy eyebrow tilting up.

"Bewildering it is," Nelson adjoined, "to see one beg so surreptitiously without a bowl for coins."

"Ah," the governor replied, "but it is not specie of which I am in need, gentlemen, but cannon – laser cannon."

"Are we to mount a campaign, my lady?"

Xiao shook her head. "No, not us directly at least." She rubbed her hands, trying to hide the shaking that she could feel slowly returning to them. "Thou remember how thou had wanted to dispose of the Black Legion, yes, Wu?"

"Of course," he confirmed.

"Good." Ci sniffed. "Because I have found the perfect place to dispose them."

"And the cannons?" Nelson asked.

"The price of disposal."

The two looked at one another and then back to her, still both quite baffled.

"We do not understand."

The lady chuckled. "I will admit it took some understanding on my part as well. I am still not quite certain how much of it I trust, but I know it is as good an excuse as any to deploy those blood-tarred miscreants. So, I will take up the opportunity now and deposit them somewhere they might cause less trouble than in our colony."

She popped her lips, leaning back in her chair in a fashion which both the male officers found disreputably casual for a woman of her stature. "Someone claiming to be the Gretwalder – and using his proper identification codes, so it cannot a complete fabrication – is willing to sell me the location of Kang's nuclear arsenal."

"And all they want is a cannon?" The admiral asked, incredulous.

Ci shrugged. "Well, they asked for thirty." She smirked. "I sent a counter-offer of ten, and I imagine we might end around eighteen or twenty, though I truly think we are exchanging numbers of little value at this point. This sort of technology is not well known on Septimi; and I can sense from our correspondence the other party is only vaguely aware of these cannon even are."

"Why toy with them, then?" Wu frowned. "What risk is there to us? If it is a trap, we shall only lose our most expendable faction to it. If, somehow in this web of deceit and deception, this proves to be the single piece of reliable intelligence any of us has touched since wandering onto this accursed system, we shall have the arsenal in our hands. Septimi will once again be ours, and we will not only have my legions at work on an orbital cannon, but the whole planetary population at our whim!"

"Exactly the reason the Joint Chiefs annexed this planet in the first place," Nelson added.

"So why negotiate with them?" The commandant asked again. "Just give them the thirty cannon and have done with it. We can rig them however we like; they will be never used against us, and thirty in a stock of thousands is not a number we will miss."

Xiao bit her lip, grinning but trying to contain the giddiness. "I never for a moment doubted I would sell them rubbish, but that does not mean I cannot pretend to be shrewd in doing so."

She tilted her head, lifting her shoulders as she smiled even more mischievously. "We cannot be too desperate; it will invite too much skepticism. And if it is really the Gretwalder somehow back from the grave, he knows just as well as you two my penchant for making difficult the lives of men." She laughed. "It is hardly appropriate to stop now."

Wu groaned and was about to ask something further when his phone rang.

"Wei?" he answered. He then covered over the receiver, explaining in a whisper, "it's the chief of staff."

"I am done here, anyways," the governor responded. "Just engineer those cannons however you, and prepare to airlift the Black Legion, though this time well outside the blast range of any potential impact. I am fine losing a band of hooligans, but I shall not forgive the loss of another air fleet."

Nelson and Ci both looked at Wu to see if he had received the message, but he was now deeply engrossed in his call. "I'll relay the instructions," the admiral smiled, standing up to see the governor off.

It was just as Ci had touched the door for second time when the commandant called her back. "Governor," he addressed, the phone still tightly pressed to his ear, "did thou give someone permission to dock your ship on the Anath?"

The lady grew entirely still but for an uncontrollable twitching about the corner of her eye. "No." Gradually more ambulation returned to her face as concern began to contort it. "No, of course not. What is going on?"

Wu shook his head, returning to the telephone. "We do not know. The chief is trying to find out. It seems your ship was taken from here to the Anath about an hour ago, claiming thou were on board. It was only when the captain's staff tried to relay a message to thee over there that the truth was revealed."

"Has someone kidnapped my slaves!" Ci asked, though there was really only one on board who warranted the thought.

Wu held out his hand. "Thy ship seems unmolested – and uninhabited. We are doing our best to locate anyone who may have been aboard." He waved to the door. "Please, go to the bridge. Nelson and I will make some calls and join thee there shortly."

Xiao did not move a muscle.

"Please, my lady," the commandant persisted, "We will have this resolved."

"We are on the case, your excellency," Nelson bowed. "Thy property will be returned unharmed. We promise with all sincerity."

Ci's teeth clattered, her chest heaving violently up and down. There was nothing she hated more than to leave these two alone, but she needed to find Ilya. It was absolutely imperative; and only the bridge staff would have the faintest picture of what might be happening. She took a breath and made her way to the door a final time.

"If I do not see you both in ten minutes without explanation, I shall see it as a mutiny, gentlemen." She could see from the frivolity of their expressions she needed to add, "and that is not entirely a jest either. I know they be merely slaves, but I take this seriously."

"Of course, your worship." Nelson affirmed.

"Yeah, sure." Wu was still too caught up in his call to make a proper reply.

After the governor had left and his chief of staff had finally released the commandant's ear, Wu finally asked his friend. "It cannot be a coincidence, can it?"

Nelson rolled his eyes. "Of course it is, Gui-gui!" He rubbed the man's shoulders, reassuring him. "Thou were worried about this from the start. It is just those nerves coming back to haunt thee. Nothing more."

The commandant winced. "But of all the ships, why the same one in which hold that Pan – on which we hide that Pan!"

"Worry thyself not, old iron," his friend assuaged. "My marines have notified me, she is being prepared to kiss the Haruspex as we speak. Even if the worst comes to pass and the governor orders a search of the entire ship, that woman's brain will be entirely extracted and her corpse tossed out an airlock long before there is even the slightest possibility of her being found."

Wu tapped his fingers together, anxious. "Thou know me well, Jishi; I have little tolerance for risk. And thou were tempting fate, Nelson! Thou and all thy comments questioning the governor and whether or not she still trusted us!"

"But can thou argue with results!" the admiral chuckled. "Had I never not spoken, she would have surely penalized thee severely for the loss of our spies. Now, once I forced her to admit her doubts, I put her, not us, into a state of contrition."

"And no," he continued, "the real risk would be to invite a war with the Cassians without Pan's virus at the ready. I do not like it any more than thee, but which shall we choose first: them or us. We need not introspect much further here."

Now instead of rubbing the commandant's shoulder, Nelson grasped them, holding him in place. "We made our decision. We were right. Nothing will change that. Worry not, old friend. Worry not."

Wu agreed. At this point, he could do little else.

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Though he had lived now the majority of his life enslaved, amongst all the days of servitude and submission, the only times Ilya had ever felt anything close to terror were two. The first had been on Cassia Luna when he had first boarded the slaver ship and signed away his freedom for the chance of a future, any future outside of the carcass of the old Order into which he had not and would never have asked to have been born.

The second was when he stood outside the legate Pan's new apartment, forested by a dense jungle of chests, valises and plastic covered furniture still lined against the bulkhead, slowly moving inwards to their final destination. He had stood, pretending to supervise the trail of dark coloured barbarian labourers slowly moving the boxes inside, building up the courage to attempt an entry himself. If it had not been for Quentin's breath suddenly dissipating against his neck, perhaps he never would have met her at all.

It had taken some time then to finally be let inside himself. The mere mention of his lady had invigorated in her such a debilitating rage that when coupled with the mere fact of his barbarian heritage threatened to verge on madness. Thankfully there had been something in his simple, unpretentious mastery of jiawen and in the softer, more civilized and less aggressive persona his powdered face and colourful sundress presented that had soothed her. She had fumed for some time, huffing through her nostrils like an enraged mother bear, but eventually he had been allowed into the den itself.

Once inside, however, and the chance of wandering eyes straying upon this unsanctioned meeting of the civilized and uncivilized had dropped to nil, the anger - or performance of anger - had fallen with it. Quentin's demeanour grew immediately more calm but inquisitive.

"If thy mistress knows not thou are here, slave," she had begun, resting down upon the still wrapped mattress laying without a frame in the middle of her room, "then for what have thou come? Not to indenture thyself to me, I hope. Thou can guess well enough my opinion on the infesting of my house with brutes such as thee."

"No, my lady," he had replied, bowing his head as he did. "I do know thy opinion well enough, and when it comes to the Cassians - my brethren, the brothers and sisters whom I have forsaken and whom have forsaken me - I can promise we both, however far apart we might be otherwise, are in this thought equals."

She had rolled her eyes. "I am not interested in this. Go back to thy master, and tell her if she tries to send thee again thou shall end up even worse than the last."

"I am no spy, Legate!" Ilya had begged her. "If there is anyone I do betray in coming here it is that woman whom I serve and love."

Pan had arched her back up from the mattress, her eyes glinting from a curious hunger that had just rekindled within her. "What are thou saying, Hamite? I have heard the craftiest of academicians who could not dance about a point as deftly as thee."

Ilya had held his tongue, leaning against the wall so as to reduce the crushing weights being dropped on him seemingly a mountain at a time. "As dreadful as thou are, Pan, I know" he chuckled, then added, morbidly, dryly, "no, I saw, that no matter the odds or the circumstance, thou will not relent. If the choice narrows, the options are limited, if are backed into a corner where only one can lose and the other can win, I know thou will fight to see us win...."

He had gulped. "...at any cost."

Pan smiled. "And thy master will not?" She had stood then, grabbing at his arms, fondling and cradling him like a visitor might greet a new house' pet. "Is that what thou mean to tell me?"

Ilya had wanted so desperately to be unhanded then, but every instinct of flight and fortitude had been beaten from him uncountable years ago. So, he had merely stayed, the dread overwhelming him.

He had turned his head, closing his eyes and hoping it would hide the little, twinkling tears that had escaped him. Despite it all, he had answered, fighting against the clutching of his throat as he did so. "I cannot go back to them. I cannot go back." His eyes had flooded. "I cannot go back!"

"Shh, shhhh," the legate had placated him, rubbing her whole hand over his face in a rough and sloppy act of reassurance that more scraped his flesh than reassured him. "Thou are right to say it. Right to fear them. Alas, I was just as you were once: frightened, alone, held thrall to my horror and prisoner to their vindictive, savage nature." She had gripped his chin. "But I found the upper hand, Ilya. I clawed back my dignity, my humanity from the barbarian jaw. As much as I hate them, I will always have you Hamites to thank for teaching me that essential truth: that it is only the struggle that can define the self."

"And that is why I came," he had whispered back, "for I know thou shall fight, and she may not."

Pan had released him for a moment, intrigued, beckoning him in her own, predatory way to continue. His sobbing only intensified as he did so, fighting against himself to pull out every word.

"Oh stars, what curse is this!" he lamented, quoting quietly the scriptures which the Party had once persecuted his family for reciting themselves, "'to have felt the warmth of paradise only to freeze beneath Blackhell's lowest ice.'"

"Speak up, barbarian!"

He had looked up at her, finally speaking clearly. "As different as we are, my lady, we both know the value of what we have," his eyes had turned steely, the crying stopped, "... and we may very well do anything to defend it."

He had shut his eyelids tight, pressing his lips firmly as well as the shock of memory coursed through him. "Perhaps I would be happier, had stayed on that moon, stayed in my hut, waited out the wars, the famines, the purge, known nothing but misery and hunger and felt eternally grateful for every scrap of slop that blessed my empty stomach and every night of shelter that shielded my bleeding body."

"But that is not the life I had. Men on Cassia Luna were rare, and in the Empire, the most rare is the most valued. I knew my price, and I took full advantage. I found a master," he had smiled, a broken, bittersweet reflection, "and she gave me a life so, so very different. She filled my days with intrigue, my nights with pleasure and my heart with a happiness so serene even now I shiver from its radiating warmth, echoing through the decades."

"But then, she fought the tiger barehanded, she flew at the sun too close, and," he had sniffed, "she took it all away."

"I lived in a Martian palace, there in the Home Worlds. There, a heartbeat away from the Emperor Himself, was I, a slave, attended by servants of my own, fed straight from the hands of my personal chefs, entertained by shouts and merriment of a private zoo, amazed each evening by a view of my holy stars so crystalline and pure I felt I might be able to reach out and touch every one of them. And in a blink, it was gone." He had looked down, ashamed. "The governor lost; she banished from the Emperor's court and I along with her."

"From a palace at the seat of Olympus Mons, I was banished to a villa in the outskirts of Vitharr. Then the Gretwalder rebelled, and I was consigned to an apartment in the colonial magistrate's palace. Then thou revolted, Pan, and I was locked away with my mistress in the dungeon. Now, I sleep on the sofa of her space cruiser."

His teeth had gritted together, knuckles popping. "Like a good slave, I have taken every blow with a smile and asked for another, but though my mouth calls out for more, my soul cannot accept it further. My master was born to wealth, so rich in fact, that she became apathetic to her own station. For that is the meaning of wealth is it not? To never know the price of anything. Me, however, I am forever laden with such knowledge."

"To her a palace is nothing but a curiosity. For me, who once had so little, it cannot but have meaning, and to lose it means all the more. She can lose all she has ever known, she can find herself in a house of sod or a pit of mud, but so long as she holds power over someone else, she will be content. Me, if I lose, if we lose, I lose everything. The Cassians, the Party, for being a servant of the Empire, for allowing them to buy my manhood, they will hate me more than any true-blooded imperial could ever irk them, and they will seek vengeance."

"So, that is my fear, Pan. I know thee to be a beast, but a beast pointed in the right direction can still protect me. Thou have the will to fight. My lady, she now claims in private conversation to have seeded the Party herself, to be even proud of having done so, perhaps, and if that were so, she would never see her own creation destroyed. She builds and thou break, and this, this is not the time to build."

Now, as Ilya viewed the legate through the shimmering energy field of her cell aboard the Anath, his words rang true as ever. Deprived of her insignia, of her office, of any trappings of civilization, Pan revealed her true nature. She bared her fangs, roared with brutal emotion and prowled the brig, searching for any means of escape. A fire was burning inside of her, a fire to which every Cassian world was nothing but a tinderbox.

As Ilya approached her, however, she settled for just a moment, a euphoric grin splashed across her face.

"I knew thou would come," she proclaimed.

"I knew she would best thee," he replied. "Thou might be a beast, but she is a born schemer."

"And which have thee want of now, Hamite?"

Ilya typed his master's passcodes into the cell's control panel. "A beast."

The shimmering electrical field was released, and now nothing stood between them. For a moment, the two merely stared at one another: the human and the unhuman, neither really knowing which was which.

Quentin broke first, rushing her enormous body to its feet so quickly the momentum seemed to rock the ship as she bolted towards the exit. It was only Ilya's words that could stopped her.

"Remember, Pan," he said, trembling as he did so, "the same as last time. Imprison her, surely, but do nothing more. She is still my master, and nothing I have done here will ever change that fact."

Pan only laughed, turning around, the look upon her face so sinister it seemed she had manifested all the evil of Blackhell itself into just between the corners of her cheekbones. "I will not lie, Ilya. For freeing myself, I can render onto thee that favour at least. To rule, I cannot act on my own. But I need only one authority in whose name I can act: thy master or," she pointed to Zheng's cell just across from her, "him."

Ilya swallowed, every particle in his being vibrating from a dreadful excitement.

"The governor's codes can be used to eject prisoners just as much as release them, correct?" she asked.

The Cassian could not respond. He bit his tongue, but even in that, the look upon his face was enough to answer the question for her.

She smiled. "Learn from me, Cassian. Let the cultured instruct the rude. Do not rely on my kindness for I have none. If thou wish me to keep thy master alive, force me. Do not even allow the possibility; take Heaven by its balls and squeeze."

She grasped his face once more. "Thou have come this far. What difference is there in taking just another step further?"

"It is ..." Ilya could feel his throat constricting again, "different."

"Really?" She chuckled. "Thou released me to do the killing for thee, but somehow it is still wrong to do the killing thyself? Is that truly the pedantry of Heaven? Is that what 'the stars' think of us? That to watch is better than to do? To enable is better than to act? Is that how abstruse your foreign gods have become?"

Ilya did not reply.

"Do it," she said, leaning down to his height so that she could stare directly into his quivering gaze. "Do it, Ilya. If thou love thy master, thou must. Or shall thou be remembered only for thy treachery and never for thy love?"

His hand wavered, sliding over the control panel, fingers still not quite prepared for the commands he knew must issue them.

Zheng was still far away, but he had heard his name and now seeing the legate escape, he had walked up to the border of his cell, screaming into the brig, howling with all his might for a single breath more of life.

As for the legate, she only watched, a satisfied grin upon her countenance and only a single thought frothing up to the forefront of her mind:

Use barbarians to subdue barbarians.

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"Update us," the governor called, her words blanketing the command staff before the keyboard clacking, console whirling and nervous chatter of the bridge did. "Immediately!"

The flagship captain, Jiang, left the elevator first, with the admiral and commandant still huddled in it, conversing. His shoulders slumped and his face adopted a tone of remorseful dejection, culpability even, but before he could say a word, Nelson walked past him and declared, resolutely and with perfect flatness, "we have lost contact with the Anath."

Jiang shifted awkwardly back and forth on his feet, clearly discomforted by this explanation, but it all it took was a single look back towards Wu and the commandant's pert, almost unnoticeable shake of the head quieted him down.

Ci, however, the river of opium in her veins now running painfully dry, was in no mood to bear such blatant buffoonery. She cut through the swarm of bridge officers milling about their command consoles, each looking back at her, eyebrows raised in hostile curiosity once she had passed them. As she reached the three commanders, she began to bellow so loudly the crew no longer even waited for her to pass before setting their own glares.

"No, we will not accept that!" she hissed, pointing a finger almost straight into the captain's eye. "Thou shall tell us all, and thou shall tell us this instant!"

"My lady," Wu attempted to soothe her, walking up behind Jiang, "please, the admiral has given a report. Respect the chain of command." He leaned in so that only the four by the elevator could hear. "Please, just before the men. We are as sensitive now as we will ever be. We need to keep coherence."

"And why might we be so sensitive, Commandant?" Xiao blasted back, unwilling entirely to lower her voice even in the slightest.

It was Pan, however, who ended up answering the question for her.

"Presidium of the All-Cassian Party, leaders of the despicable Hamite race-," a gravelly spotted voice thrummed through the ship's speakers.

"Where is this coming from?" the governor asked her lieutenants, but when they looked back with nothing more than shock and confusion, she abandoned them entirely and began walking the floor of the bridge, searching out answers. "How can it be a ghost still speaks?"

"... Praetor Pan Quentin, leader of the Imperial Septimi Battle-fleet and loyal servant of His Majesty-."

"Silence this!" the lady shouted, berating what looked to be a signals officer.

"... declaration of war to liberate forever this system from the merciless tyranny of Party tyrants-."

"Jam it!" Xiao slammed the officer's console. She had hoped the man would look up at her, pale and in fright, happily willing to do all she told him, but instead, he just calmly arched his neck towards the captain and asked, almost as if she were no more than a phantom before him, "orders, sir?"

"Thou spawn of a slop-covered-," the governor began, but Jiang interrupted the curse from above her, shouting, "scramble the transmission!"

"... shall fight to the dea-."

Pan's words suddenly went silent.

"The Anath is powering weapons," reported another station on the far side of the bridge.

"Action stations!" the captain called. In almost the same motion, he pulled a telephone from the central console up to his ear and announced to the whole ship, "Eternal Phoenix, all crew, prepare for action. All crew, ready action stations."

"The Anath is hailing us," the signals officer behind Wu reported.

"Ignore them!" the governor demanded, coating the bridge-man's face in spittle as she did so.

"Patch it through to my line," Jiang called out, and he took up another receiver from the phone bank at his console.

The lady could only stare in disbelief, her eyes fluttering between the captain and the signals officer, not knowing whom she should berate first. Alarms began blaring out through the ship as Ci lifted her skirts and darted back up the steps to the commanders.

The admiral and commandant kept furtively prodding at Jiang, ordering him to end the call, to quiet his tongue, but the captain was too engrossed to pay attention. Not wanting to seem like they had lost control, they stood back from him in relaxed positions, acting as if all was normal even as the governor stormed towards them.

"Wu, raise the mobile legion. We need to retake that ship as soon possible."

"No," Nelson shook his head, whispering as he brought the governor closer, still looking over his shoulders to see how many of the bridge crew were listening. "If Pan was somehow released, we cannot trust the legion. It may well have been them that freed her."

"What sort of nonsense-." Wu attempted to interject, but Nelson only kept pushing.

"I suggest we use my marines, my lady."

Xiao snorted. "If Pan was somehow left alive, we cannot trust the marines either, admiral." Her fingers clawed into her pounding skull. "Fuck!" She shrugged, exasperated. "We shall send both. Whoever remains loyal can clean up the other also."

The two nodded, time being too precious now to argue over even the most significant of details. They rushed to the phone bank but just as they were about to log in and begin to issue their orders, Jiang, the receiver still firmly attached to his ear, beckoned they halt.

"No," he stated plainly, not so much an order as a statement, before returning to his call.

"Jiang," Nelson walked back towards the captain, "if thou do not give us access to the ship's communications, thou shall find yourself skipper of the scullery maids faster than one might count the number of hairs adorning my naked head."

"The Anath is firing upon the Cassian fleet, sir!"

The captain spoke faster, more furiously into his telephone, signaling for his security staff to keep the admiral at bay.

Again losing her patience, the lady Ci began prowling the bridge, shouting, "raise the cannon! Raise the cannon. Destroy them while we still can! Do not let them fire!"

"Be still, woman!" Wu called out, racing after her, every eye in enormous room turning their way. The officers were scandalized, gawking at the rantings of a senile lunatic stripping in public before his desperate handlers. "If we fire at this range, it could destroy the whole fucking planet!"

Nelson, seeing the pair of marines coming up behind him, began to speak more softly, imploring, "please, Jiang. Let us prepare an assault. We can take Anath back! I am certain. We can. We need only-."

"Sir," the captain interrupted, dropping the telephone for only a minute, "I highly recommend that Governor Ci be placed under arrest and removed from the bridge."

"Thou shall do no such thing!" Xiao cried, slamming her feet like a petulant child. She marched up to the tactical officer. "Prefect! Power thy weapons and destroy the Anath. That is an order!"

"Xiao, please!" the commandant continued to run after her.

"Sir," Jiang continued, ignoring the pandemonium below them. "All the other captains have agreed. This is my final recommendation."

The marines stood shoulder to shoulder with Nelson now, fingering the pistols at their hips.

It had been a long while since theadmiral had taken orders instead of giving them. He would grow used to it inrecord time.