Assassin

by Kali Altsoba

  He spits fire and fury and death sentences at subordinates who allow escape at the last possible moment of the Krevan War Government, which bohrs away from Aral’s backside LP. Then he approves a brutal occupation and harsh retribution for any and all resistance on all the conquered Krevan worlds. He makes war, in short, as an Imperium field marshal makes war: without mercy or regrets. It’s why Pyotr appointed him Chief of the Great General Staff. The Little General is now the most famous, respected military man in the whole Imperium, hailed across the officer corps as a master strategist and exquisite field commander.

  Two weeks after overseeing barely opposed landings on Aral, he’s back on Kestino consulting subordinates on a methodical campaign to reduce every one of the holdout Krevan worlds, which must soon fall into his hands like overripe fruit. He has an invasion plan drawn up even for the distant Twins of Krakoya system. That’s next to the Dauran border. On the starmaps, it’s still northeastern Krevan space. Hundreds of millions are fleeing, trying to reach five sanctuary moons the Calmari are holding open. The refugee situation is now at the top of the agenda of all interstellar politics in Orion. It’s building toward crisis. Onur is fuming but also worried. It’s rumored in GGS hallways that Pyotr and Jahandar have been in secret contact for years, making war plans in the dark. Will they attack worlds besides those he has already conquered, carve out more space for the two towering eastern empires to rule by barbarism and brutality? Will they attack the other Neutral states next? They must not take on the most powerful star nation in Orion, the faux republic called the Calmar Union!

  “It’s only a rumor, field marshal. It can’t be true. Our border patrols say that the Hermit Empire remains sealed as tight as a DNA vacuum jar. I’ve checked with Military Intelligence. All their Dauran files have been closed for years.”

  “Tell them to open them back up, Major Winter. I have a cold feeling that something is amiss among the northern stars. I will ask ‘Pyotr’s Pet’ about it.”

  “He will speak to you on this matter?”

  “I will insist. He’s coming to see me today.”

  “At your request, or his?”

  “Even the Chief of the Great General Staff does not summon Pyotr’s Pet. He asked for the meeting, but I insisted that it take place here.”

  Onur is waiting impatiently for an emissary from the Jade Court, said to be bringing an urgent message that must be delivered immediately and in person. Pyotr is sending the man outsiders call “his loyal cur.” He is anything but that. Takeshi Watanabe is the innermost favorite of all The Admitted. He is to deliver a strange, unbelievable order to Onur that will change everything in the war, and the future of the Thousand Worlds of Orion.

  ***

  Onur has an extraordinary ability to play double games and cooperate with potential enemies. It’s what kept him alive ‘till now, lulling suspicions about disloyalty. In his professional duties, he’s a strict disciplinarian, distrustful of subordinates as well as opponents. He’s neither friendly nor gregarious. It’s a rare trait of isolation in a man at the center of cobweb networks of cunning and deceit, linked to more distant and fragile webs, each gossamer thread tied into fine concentric circles of relationships and conspiracy, all hanging precariously on fatal secrets.

  He receives the ‘Mouth of the Imperator’ in a simple, wood paneled office in an outer ring of GGS Main HQ. The venue is meant to send a message to Pyotr by insulting his emissary with deliberate plainness. There’s something else, more petty. Onur is so put out at meeting a mere colonel, especially this colonel, that he just can’t leave it alone, even though his wise aide Major Oscar Winter pleads that he should. He’s too proud. He must make the point about the gap in their ranks out loud, spit it right into Takeshi’s smirking face before he even sits down.

  “Speak quickly. I’ve a war to manage and worlds to conquer still, for your master Pyotr.” He says ‘master’ with a decided sneer.

  “I too wish to keep our meeting brief, field marshal, to let you run the war. However, protocol demands something more of us. Therefore, pardon that I slip into the old forms and rituals of speech. Pyotr insists that I do it this way. He’s my master, as you say, and I must obey him in this matter.”

  It was, of course, Takeshi who flattered Pyotr by advising him to insist on flowery protocol, knowing the ritual will irritate and perhaps provoke Onur into an error of impatience or underestimation. ‘If your enemy is secure, be prepared for him. If he is superior in strength, evade him. If he is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.’

  Onur sees immediately what Takeshi is up to, what old book he is playing from. He decides to play chess in preference to sparring with a mere colonel using precepts of one of the military classics. He opens a French Defense. “Play the ritual if you must and how you must, and as your master orders, but know that my time is finite. You may waste your own, but I shall not permit you to waste mine beyond what the Tennō asks and duty requires.”

  And so a double game is on. Playing black, Takeshi counters by moving his king’s knight in a nonstandard aggressive opening. “I must start by first pointing out that Pyotr Shaka III is your master, too.”

  Onur recoils at the word. ‘Master’ is not a formal title of the Imperator, and not accepted by Old Families. To Onur, the Oetkert-Shakas are merely primus inter pares, first family among an oligarchy of equals. Nor has he any religious illusions about the Imperator’s ritual role as leader of the Black Faith. Dowager Mary put paid to that notion for generations to come, by ordering the Red Purge of the cowls. The whole Imperium was sprinkle sprayed with high priest blood.

  “Harrumph! Careful what you say! An outcaste, a lowborn like you, has a master. Or more than one. We highborn do not. We are masters, not mastered. Proceed as you are ordered by your master.” Knight counters knight.

  Takeshi thinks: ‘Is it the start of a mating attack, so soon? He’s too thin of skin, so he wears his Old Family inheritance as chain mail under his armor and his honor. I can work with that. Vanity is the most useful of all vices.’

  “This my master’s message: ‘Field Marshal, my Emissary comes to you in the name of the great and noble Imperator, Tennō Pyotr Shaka Oetkert III, illustrious descendant of the Jade Eye, greatest of all our warrior kings. Pyotr Shaka III is firstborn son of Karl Joseph and...’”

  “Oh, by the heavens, stop! Spit out the damn message and be on your way!” Onur loses his temper too quickly. It’s a mistake.

  Takeshi just took his queen’s knight. As he does, he remembers the classic caution: ‘Even the finest sword plunged into salt water will rust.’

  “Well? Out with it!”

  “You’re right to be impatient with old rituals. They should be changed, you agree?” ‘Confirm your enemy’s projections, settle him into predictable patterns of response, occupy his mind with diversions while you wait for a moment which he cannot anticipate.’

  “Careful how you question me, boy. I’m headman of the Onurs. I stand atop a pyramid of a hundred generations of Old Family heritage, older even than the Oetkert-Shaka line. You stand by yourself, half sunk in a shifting dune of one man’s favor. And a dry wind is blowing hard.”

  “You stand atop a pyramid? Why, from up there your vision must compete with the Eye of Providence itself!” Takeshi received a classical education, too, although of a different kind. His came with rape and caning by monks on Fates, so it never went to his head, as Onur’s did. It lets him spar with any smug elitist. A bishop slides up the board in a King’s Indian Defense. “Does it make you dizzy to look down on so many billions of lowborn gathered below you, to gaze from so great and godlike a height? It would give me vertigo to stand on top of a pyramid of so many dead Onurs.”

  Onur decides to move his rook, to put this lowborn errand boy in his place and into a fast check. “You are Pyotr’s messenger by day, whatever you are to him at night. I hear that you serve as the ‘Mouth of the Imperator’ under cover, and under his cove
rs also. Is this so?”

  Takeshi let’s the smutty insinuation slip past. It’s an agreed ruse he arranged with Pyotr. It pleases him to hear the ribald cover story working so well that the Chief of the Great General Staff is wholly taken in, and allows it to divert his attention and anger from the vital moment. “I am who I am. I claim no other.” He says it smiling internally, as he thinks: ‘All warfare is based on deception.’

  “And I’m a Rikugun field marshal, scion of one of the Oldest Families in the Imperium. I’ve researched your background. You’re a mere child of Fates, the bastard son of treasonous Brethren.” Did Fidan Onur ever read Sun Tzu? Of course. Yet he decides to stick with chess, since he controls the most powerful pieces on the board. He thinks he’s playing Pyotr through a proxy. He misses the bigger game within a game that Takeshi plays with clever words.

  Takeshi threatens his opponent’s rook with queen, answering provocation with greater provocation. But not because he has been offended. He insults with cold calculation just to take the measure of this general. ‘If you know the enemy and yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.’

  “I’m no son of cowls. I’m an even truer bastard. Not born into a preordained position of great natural authority like you. I left Fates to secure my own fate. I was not a lucky sperm, squirted by an overbred father into a broodmare mother. I swam on my own, unaided to reach the Jade.”

  “It’s fortunate that you’re protected by Pyotr’s ermine robe, smeared onto his person like one of his fish oil stains. Or I would have your tongue out for the vulgar offense it just gave me.”

  “I’m not without defenses of my own, field marshal. You should think of me as like a scorpion, sir. You may well step on me and crush out my life and future, but it won’t be done painlessly.” It’s as cold a thing as he has ever said. Utterly controlled, with no rage in it. ‘Strategy without tactics is the slow route. Tactics without strategy is noise before defeat.’

  “Is that a threat?” Onur is so angry he doesn’t see the king’s trap forming on the board. “How dare you?!”

  Sacrifice a pawn. “No, it’s a fact of life. But enough about our parentage! I concede that yours exceeds mine: yours is the superior pedigree. Your high birth and rank correctly put me in my place. I humbly apologize for any offense.”

  Onur is stuffed with bewildered rage, but he says: “At least in politic words, you recognize your lowborn position in the natural order.”

  “I do, and I defer. I’m not here to bargain since I am not your equal. I am, as you say, a simple messenger of our shared master.” Again he insults, feinting with king’s knight to draw an angry rebuke in an ill considered move by Onur that gives away the game.

  “Don’t say ‘master’ to my face again! Speak your master’s words, and be gone! I’ll not say it again without consequences. Nor will I sit still through more of your impertinent banter, barely disguised as servility.” Onur snatches up the proffered knight, and tosses it angrily from the board. Another mistake.

  A hard check. “Very well. I’m charged to reveal that Pyotr has made alliance with Jahandar, a longstanding alliance as it happens. The Imperium and Daura will be allies against the Calmari. Make your war plans accordingly.”

  “What?!” Onur is genuinely stunned. He expected to be told to prepare for war with the Calmar Union, but never as an ally of Jahandar. How did the black queen slip past a vacated knight’s flank, all the way down the edge of the board to threaten his king? His high confidence and whole position are crumbling.

  “You heard me right, field marshal. Dauran armies and fleets will strike our ancient enemies at the same time we do. Pyotr’s genius has smashed the ‘Auld Alliance even before the war begins. Here is the agreed timetable and list of your target worlds.” He hands Onur a code secret scroll.

  “Pyotr can’t be serious! An invasion of the Calmar Union is bad enough, but in alliance with the Tyrant of Nalchik? The filthy Daurans are as much our ancient enemy as any Calmari ever was or is!”

  “He is serious. He always is on matters of life and death, and war.”

  “When was this agreed? How did this happen?”

  “On the when, even I’m uncertain how far back Pyotr’s plans reach.”

  Endgame begins. “And the how?”

  “You know already. There’s only one possible way.”

  Queen takes pawn. “The Green Ships!”

  White king, check. “Indeed, the Green Ships.”

  “They sent secret envoys via the annual ships,” Onur repeats.

  Black rook, check. “Very good, sir.”

  Onur suddenly sees the endgame close inescapably around his white king. He’s flustered into a final error and defeat. “Don’t patronize me, boy! I’ll not warn you again to remember your proper place!”

  Black queen, check. “You should remember yours, field marshal.” Takeshi spits the threat across the wooden room with the suddenness of Zeus hurling a fire bolt from Elysium at terrified, scattering mortals far below. ‘Let your plans be impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.’

  The clear and present danger on Takeshi’s face startles Onur. The fact that he dares to speak so bluntly in this room where Onur controls access and guards, forces the Little General to reevaluate. He is no fool. He knows in a moment’s revelation that Takeshi is not to be trifled with. That he is not ‘Pyotr’s Pet’ or ‘Pyotr’s Mouth’ or any of a dozen other vulgar outcaste insults. That he’s vastly more powerful than anyone knew or suspected, even among The Admitted. Onur sees that this sleek young man carries certain death in his gaze and words.

  Check mate. “Your orders are for all out war against the Neutrals of central Orion and to invade the closest southwestern systems of the Calmar Union. The deadline is three months from today.”

  Onur concedes. “That’s not a lot of time.”

  “You mapped out the first wave invasions of Krevan systems in ten days.” Takeshi turns to flattery, knowing that he controls pace, rules and outcome. ‘When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.’

  “That was five worlds of a minor power, not twenty-five heavily defended Calmari systems plus Helvetics and Threes. We had long practiced for a smaller war against the Krevans. We’re not ready for this.”

  “You have the time that you have. The secret can’t be kept longer than that. The invasion must be timed to covert deception efforts underway at the highest levels of the Calmari government.”

  “This is decided without any military input. We’re ordered to carry it out?”

  “Twenty-five is only the first wave. Pyotr expects they will fall quickly to your skill, with benefit of a strategic and political surprise that we’ll engineer.”

  ‘You reveal much in that careless pronoun, colonel. You and Pyotr planned this together. You are now a power unto yourself inside the Jade Court. Even across the Imperium and in all Orion.’ Out loud Onur asks: “And the rest, the second and third waves?”

  “You will receive your orders in due course, as the invasions proceed.”

  “I assume that you know, as a military man, that no grand battle plan survives first contact with the enemy?”

  “I do, as a military man.”

  “Calmari will not sit idly and wait for us to impose our will on their worlds. They’ll react, setting up a dynamic interaction of opposing wills and forces.”

  “Yes, field marshal. I’ve read the Rikugun and Kaigun warfighting manuals. I know that you believe a competitive rhythm is established in war, where one side masses for attack only to find that massing creates vulnerability.”

  “And then?”

  “Forced to disperse by enemy fire, the attacker withdraws to recover, then masses for a renewed attack. And so, too, does his foe. And on and on it goes.”

&nbs
p; “Do you also understand that war gravitates always toward disorder?”

  “I do. Again, I have read your theories and manuals. But war is more than theory and cold tactics taken from a draughtsman’s board or a war game table. We have confidence in you, field marshal. As was borne out in your Krevan plans.”

  “Pyotr asks us to impose order through sheer will and force, but this enemy has deep resources. No matter how hard we hit him he’ll recover from our early blows, then do the same to us. What makes you think we can win?”

  “Pyotr has maneuvered Jahandar into simultaneously attacking in the north. That will distract and deflect a huge portion of Calmari forces, perhaps a third or more, and permit you to attack deeper still into exposed southern systems.”

  “We gamble that the iron dice roll sixes for us every time? I foresee a vastly greater war, far more reckless than I imagined even Pyotr would ever entertain. I see it stretching into years, even decades, and an endless vista of attrition.”

  “You may be right, but we think innate Imperium superiority at war, our military skill and Pyotr’s diplomatic surprise will win the day. Perhaps even the rolling fortune of the iron dice of war will favor us, as you say?”

  “They must roll sixes again and again. Such luck is the rarest thing in war.”

  “We shall see.”

  “We shall indeed, if any of us live to see it.”

  ‘Even now, after I reveal myself, his Old Family arrogance and his personal professionalism impel him to openly criticize decisions by the throne. I might warn Pyotr that this general is not loyal, but what is gained by that? I shall wait to see what disloyalty brings to him, and perhaps in time also what opportunity it gains to me. Is he a man who broods, or one who acts? I think the latter.’