Assassin

by Kali Altsoba

  Adamu admired the Dowager, before the Red Purge. He hoped that Pyotr would follow her example and become a traditional, conservative monarchist devoted to preservation of the old ways. He started to reassess when the Fourth Orion War began and Pyotr joined in public celebration of Purity, whether he meant it or not in private. When SAC and Sakura-kai fanatics on Aral told him they had authority from Kestino to seize local children from parents, and to start a broad genetic sorting of the peoples and elimination of all ‘useless mouths,’ he changed. Then he changed sides. He’s not a hater. He could never become a Purist. No more than he ever accepted the odious and desiccated Black Faith or murderous urges of the Brethren when they were the power in the Jade Court. As governor, he’s sensitive to travails of the occupied population and doesn’t stand by idly as they’re persecuted. That’s why he sought out the officer who once approached him about his politics, to set up a backchannel to Onur at GGS.

  Onur sent no less than Major Winter to encourage Adamu, to work on his deep morals, his sense of honor and sympathy for billions in his charge on Aral. Together they traveled to Portus Cale. It was the first time since his wounding that Adamu left Aral. Ostensibly, they were on a mission to coordinate more closely with Dauran military leaders. Adamu was appalled by all the senseless devastation he saw. In an odd parallel to the trigger that set off Hans Schuler, he felt dishonored by tales of how Daurans treated farfolk worlds they conquered, acting in league and vile partnership with his beloved Imperium.

  ***

  Six months before Hans Schulen arrives on Aral, Admiral Adamu thinks he can make a difference with a last intervention. GGS agreed to send a hospital ship full of badly wounded Alliance prisoners to the other side, in exchange for a hospital ship filled with Rikugun wounded from Amasia.

  The exchange is made with ship’s external lights on and camo off, in high orbit above Nix, a small Amasian moon. Adamu set it up, including slipping a Resistance agent into an odd mix of repatriated Threes, Krevans, Helvetics, and Calmaris. He gave the man orders to seek out Alliance contacts, to ensure he’s finally debriefed by SRG on Kars. To tell the enemy about the Resistance. He got away with it because Onur convinced Pyotr that the prisoner exchange was a way to insert a raft of Loyalist spies and agents of influence into enemy space, and to make contact with ethnics loyal to the Imperium. Onur gave Adamu the names of all the Loyalists who were planted on the exchange ship. They were caught by SGC counterintelligence in a walk on arrest too crudely handled. It gave the game away, even before the Loyalist agents were executed in secret.

  Adamu tells a young aide, who worried at actively aiding the enemy in this way: “It’s what we must do to help avert our own long slide into evil. This war takes us beyond any one nation. Not to speak against evil is to speak for evil. Not to act against injustice, is to act for it.” He knows that most officers and men in his command think more like Pyotr and less like him and the Resistance. He knows that some of his aides have killed prisoners in consolidation sweeps; or ordered a hundred little death marches and a thousand pointless murders. Or is it a hundred thousand? A million? Is deliberate famine also murder? He can’t live with it. A man of genuine and aroused conscience, he’s driven to act.

  What neither Adamu nor Onur or anyone in the Resistance knows is that Takeshi Watanabe also had a spy in the exchange ship of wounded prisoners. He posed as a nurse, and reported disappearance of the Loyalist agents and his own suspicion that they were betrayed by a double agent among the prisoners. Takeshi was already suspicious of Adamu’s part in the betrayal. Now he knows.

  “We must be careful of this wannabe priest whom you promoted for his war wounds and made Governor of Aral,” he told Pyotr, who fumed with rage.

  “Arrest him!”

  “That’s not advisable. Not yet. We should monitor him and find out all the members of his Resistance cell.”

  “Put your men on him, in that case.”

  “I already have. He is being closely watched.”

  “What of Onur? Can my Little General be trusted?”

  “I have no proof yet, but I have long had doubts.”

  “Resolve them. I must know if it’s safe to go to Aral, for the anniversary.”

  “I will take special measures long before that happens. Be assured.”

  “Good. I do not intend to die prematurely at the hands of my own military. I intend to go down in history either as the greatest statesmen of the Thousand Worlds, or as its worst villain. Nothing less will do!”

  ***

  Adamu was born and raised to be a navy man. His knowledge of war even after the Genève Obliteration and Yalto Exodus remained confined to warships firing silent salvos in the black of space, to traditional tales and values of gentlemen making sedate and sensitive war in the stars. Time on Aral and then the visit to Portus Cale exposed him to harder, uglier realities of ground warfare. Exposed him to burned out cities and slaughtered populations, to vast ruin and orgiastic destruction. To rape and massacre and death marches. To brutal prison camps mushrooming all along the coast. It exposed him to another kind of war entirely. One of clashing and murderous ideology, of cults of personality and men filled with fanatic belief driving human herds out of burning cities. Showed him the ruin of cultures and civil behavior, and a looming end of civilization.

  Adamu tried to rescue individuals from SAC torture sentences and Purity consolidation camps. He dipped into prisoner lists as often as he could. He tried to save refugee families, to return uprooted villagers to stolen homes. But each life he saved or protected he had to weigh against a brutal calculus of possible discovery and an end to his benevolent interventions. ‘How many more lives will be lost if I’m arrested for saving one, before we can kill Pyotr and end the Orion War? Is it more indulgence than morality to try to save just one or two?’

  By the end of Year Two, he no longer intervened. He stopped after a last try to get Pyotr to change policy. He wrote directly to the Jade Court about “special mistreatment of women” in the camps, pleading also for a more humane policy toward prisoners of war. “We gain nothing from mistreatment of prisoners, especially their military women. And we lose much. Our men are being badly treated in retaliation, while our guards are lesser men for what they do. I write, majesty, because I don’t believe you know what’s happening in your name. I speak because silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Please intervene, or the gods will pass judgment on us for what we’re doing.”

  Pyotr laughed out loud when he read Adamu’s petition. He sent no answer. To Takeshi he sneered: “Doesn’t this soft admiral understand? To choose one's victims, to prepare a plan minutely, to slake implacable vengeance and sleep well afterward, why there’s nothing sweeter in all the worlds.”

  “I hate violence of any sort and I abominate war even more,” Adamu told a circle of admirers and adjutants. He was always a man of strict religious faith. But he’s fully converted to the Resistance cause by the end of Year Two, even if it means killing many old friends in a civil war. As for killing Pyotr, to whom he swore a solemn oath? He has no qualms at all about tyrannicide. After the trip to Portus Cale, he becomes a central player in the Resistance. Onur trusts him completely. It’s why he sends Hans Schulen to see him in Yalto. “I couldn’t have chosen a better man for this job.”

  Grace

  “Big Whiff indeed. More like a Cosmic Failure.” It’s a midlevel Supply officer who’s complaining to no one in particular. He’s off duty on an Alliance moon 50 bohrs to the rear of the nearest active, frontline system. Has never seen any live fighting. Used to be a big deal in intelligence. Had an office-with-a-view in the 6th MoD tower on Caspia, as part of Director Sanjay Pradip’s outfit.

  “It wasn’t much of a plan, which is why it whiffed so badly.” His drinking buddy worked worlds away, at SRG on Kars. Actually spoke once to Director Virgiliu Nicolescu about some prewar prediction that, of course, turned out to be wrong. No one noticed until they looked after the Orion War broke out. They met about six
months before the Dual Powers struck seemingly out of nowhere and the perfumed fatman was disgraced and dismissed, for being totally wrong about the real plans of the Imperium and Daurans. Then he killed himself.

  “A real cock up, first time they tried it. That farce with the armtraks.”

  “The second time, with the parade? Just as bad and a lot bloodier.”

  If sacked officers like these guys, who lost their careers because they were accused of missing an opportunity to prevent war, really knew the details of the Big Whiff and the Coup that Wasn’t they’d probably launch a coup of their own against their old bosses on Kars and Caspia. Because no covert or overt Alliance help would have made a whit of difference to the success or failure of the coup attempt or the Resistance inside the Imperium. Not a whistle or a whit.

  “They’ll never get any better. That’s what I hear from my old contacts.”

  He’s lying. He has no intel contacts left. He’s a supply officer now, has been for three years. Yet, the former MoD man always drops hints like that, usually over drinks, suggesting that he’s plugged into the pipeline with “the old gang” back in MoD on Caspia. Says to anyone who’ll listen, and that’s a short list, that he’s on the inside, “in the know” and influential. That he’s worth knowing and listening to on all the big issues. But he isn’t, and never was. It’s why MI counter intel has stopped looking at him. In his file they etched: “Blowhard.”

  “If you ask me,” the SRG man says grandly back, because no one does ask him anymore, “it failed because hasty plotters among the prewar generals of Rikugun and the admirals in Kaigun couldn’t decide to kill Pyotr Shaka.”

  “Yeah, there was too much hesitation by the ‘big hats.’ Too many wanted only to arrest and imprison him. They forgot: if you strike at the king, you must kill him.” The former MoD man nods pompously at his own remark, suggesting to all the worlds that he just said something that’s profoundly original.

  “It’s an issue that won’t go away. It’ll hover, waxing and waning, paralyzing the opposition to Pyotr’s regime and war policies until someone decides to kill him and figure out the rest later.” Well, the former MoD man is a fool, that’s clear. But the old SRG guy? Not so much. Maybe he shouldn’t have been fired, sent to wait out the war on a backworlds moon? ‘Cause he’s not wrong. Killing Pyotr is key to success of the Resistance. Maybe also to ending the Orion War.

  ***

  Onur and Winter are moral men who must do indecent, immoral things to maintain their cover. The field marshal must keep men in command positions whom he knows are war criminals who will order more unjust executions, mass deportations, and outright massacres on occupied worlds. He must himself issue orders to do foul, unbelievable things that are now official Imperium policy. Major Winter is forced to write up and deliver those dirty orders, to sign off on mass murder, to approve retaliation campaigns against civilians, indiscriminate convoy warfare and wholesale planetary bombardment. If the Fourth Orion War ends in an Alliance victory tomorrow, each of them knows he will be hanged for war crimes that rank among the worst in history.

  After bright eyed Hans Schuler leaves for Aral, with official travel papers in hand, Onur calls in Oscar Winter to brief him on the mad colonel’s plan. When he finishes, he says something else entirely. Something quite familiar to Major Winter, for they’ve had this conversation before. Too many times, in too many ways. It is become a ritual, and nearly a confession and a prayer by Onur.

  ‘Hear me, oh Lord.’ “I confide in you, major, that I grow sickened by what I must do each day in my official duties as Chief of the Great General Staff.”

  Winter knows what’s coming. Like an Old Believer priest tired of hearing confessions every day, he wearily permits the opening. “In what ways, sir?”

  ‘Confessor, I wish to make a statement of my guilt.’ “Beyond extraordinary and immoral orders that I must issue from time to time, because my emperor and my subordinates expect it of me, my daily duties are a great burden to me.”

  “That’s because you are a decent soul, sir. If I may be so bold.”

  ‘That was too easy, for I am a great sinner.’ “I sign reinforcement orders. I call up drafts of ever younger age cohorts. Every day, I send tens of thousands of our young men to die senseless deaths in this stupid, needless war.”

  Winter shifts roles, from confessor to fellow sufferer. “Can we stop it, sir?” He asks it plaintively, knowing the ritual answer. “Can we delay the next major offensive? Can we pause this damned war for just a day or two of weary rest?”

  “It’s in the nature of the thing. There is no escape from the war.” Onur shifts from Old Belief to the Black Faith. ‘I sin, but the greater sin is in Creation.’

  “I agree. Looking back, I cannot see what we could have done differently.” ‘Your sins, and mine, move beyond forgiveness into fatalism. It is the Kali Age.’

  “If I slow down our reinforcements, if I don’t do everything I can to help the braided bastards win this war, they’ll replace me. And who then will bring Pyotr down and his war to an end? Who will be here to put all the pieces back together when an Alliance invasion fleet arrives in orbit?” ‘I make an argument from necessity, for the greater good. I am a sinner, but I am necessary.’

  “There’s no one but you, sir, who could do this so well.” Onur needs to hear Winter say it one more time. He made his confession, he asked forgiveness of his sins, he made his excuse. Now he needs absolution. “You do what you must, sir. I see that in the order scrolls. You didn’t start this. You want to end it. None of this is your fault.” ‘I absolve you of your sin.’

  “And yet I can’t go on. I can’t.” Well, that’s new.

  “You know that you must, sir.”

  “No! Enough! It has to stop. I’m going to stop it.”

  “We’re going to act?” ‘We seek not forgiveness but redemption?’

  “Yes. It is time. We’ll start the rising if this wild eyed man succeeds in his improbable gambit to kill Pyotr on Aral.”

  “Whether or not he succeeds?” ‘Are we in search of martyrdom?’

  “Yes, Major Winter. That odd colonel who came to see me today may give us the chance we need. In any case, we can’t wait any longer. History will judge us irresolute and feckless if we fail to strike. We’ll act with all force we have. If we fail, well then we fail. It’s time.” ‘I make an act of contrition, for my sins.’

  “Yes sir. It is time.”

  “I’m glad you concur, major. It means a lot to me, sinner to sinner.”

  “May I say that we should hold nothing back? We go all-in with every asset we have, whenever you decide to roll the iron dice.” ‘The Morning Star calls his better angels to rebellion, doomed though it will be before the Mount of God. Yet his tail drew a third part of the stars of heaven and cast them to earth.’

  “They’re in my hand, warming.”

  He reconfirms the details of his conversation with squirrely Colonel Hans Schulen; that he will kill Pyotr on Aral in ten days time and then they’ll launch the long delayed coup d’état. He hands over a stack of flash papers, ready-and-deployment orders that need to be encoded then burned. “Adamu was told to lend all possible aid, that he needs to clear the way and secure the shooter from possible discovery. The moment we hear his coded message that Pyotr is dead, I want you to release my final GGS communiqué to all Resistance circles.”

  “Final communiqué, sir?” Winter worries: ‘Is it to be a Sermon on the Mount or a warning from your grave?’

  “Yes, my last as Chief of Staff. I’ve had this in my pocket for the past three months. I mean to issue it whether our brave, mad colonel succeeds or fails.”

  “Either way sir, we are going all-in?”

  “Yes, we go ahead no matter which outcome the colonel’s bullet brings us. Either we win this gambit and replace Pyotr, or we lose. Either in a week I’ll lead a military regime under the title Generalissimo, or we lose all. Then you and I both die, along with the honor of the old I
mperium. Resistance to this war ends when we do.” ‘Hosannas to us, in the highest!’

  “Understood, sir.”

  “You must get this out, either way.”

  “You can count on me, sir.”

  “I always do, Major Winter. Here it is. Keep it safe, until the time is right.”

  Winter takes a scroll from Onur’s small hand. It’s passed to him most gently by the Little General. He reads it start-to-finish, slowly. The two conspirators, two honorable men in dishonorable times, look directly at each other, man-to-man. Then Major Oscar Winter snaps to attention and crisply salutes Fidan Onur.

  “The message will get out, sir.”

  “Thank you, major. That’s all for now.”

  ***

  Special Order #1, Provisional Military Government, Novaya Uda, Kestino (no date): Peoples of the homeworlds! Men of the Resistance! Your hour is here, your time is now! We strike at the tyrant Pyotr! We strike down his tyranny! Strike for the liberty of all our homeworlds! For the heimat! Strike for your caste! Strike for your families! Strike for your honor as officers and as men!

  Show mercy in your firmness, but do not hesitate to cut heads off snakes that curl around the Jade Throne to poison our policies and strangle our blessed homeworlds. Pyotr Shaka undermines our best values, despises our traditions, ignores our honor and the magnanimity of our proud peoples who won a great and sufficient victory over Krevans in Year One of this war. We recovered what was ours. The stars themselves cried out to Pyotr: “It must stop!”

  Yet he did not stop. He attacked a far more powerful enemy; he provoked twin invasions of our own space, brought fire down upon our worlds, because he invaded and ravaged farfolk worlds that were never ours. We recovered our Lost Children and rejoiced at the strong arms of our military, then he ruined our joy by stealing from our neighbors’ homes children we did not covet. Our war is over. His war continues without end. We occupy many farfolk worlds but do not win them to our heimat because we mistreat billions of innocents. It must stop!