Assassin

by Kali Altsoba

  And now here he is, lying on the roof of a Life Temple, inside the base of its steeple with a superior rifle and a perfect shooting lane looking down on the Imperator Podium below. He knows this is his place of perfect destiny, where he will meet his divinely appointed hour and mission. He watches the square below clear, and green bunting and lighting installed. He lets his mind wander to his envisioned Celestial Imperium, dreaming of an ideal state and blissful future for all Humanity that he’ll launch into being with a compact sound bullet that splits open Pyotr’s skull, like a melon hit with an axe. Everything is perfect now that he’s the Hand of God. ‘You told Grün mothers that you would liberate our Lost Children worlds, not that you would murder and enslave the children of grieving farfolk mothers. Your war is all a monstrous lie.’

  Hans Schuler is doing something that he never tried in his pampered youth or adult life. He’s taking direct responsibility. He’s putting himself at the center of events. He is a lone wolf assassin, but he has made contact with the greater pack, led by Field Marshal Fidan Onur. It’s time to howl. ‘My bullet is the Truth that ends the Lie. My act brings Redemptive Grace back to the worlds. God told me that, and I see that it’s true. How Great Thou Art!’

  In war, most men want to escape from the center to the margins, to abjure responsibility for war’s unpredictable and uncontrollable consequences. Hans Schuler moves to the center, exactly where he wants to be. He’s inside a vortex of Cosmic Purpose, pulling him into Herself, wet with pulses of moral bliss, thrusting him up toward his perfect Final Destiny, curling Godhead around him in a Cosmic womb-mother-lover-sister-father-brotherhood-of-all.

  ***

  Four days later, a pastel dawn breaks the sky to the east. It begins with a jagged line of white light appearing atop a range of low lying hills. As the crack widens and yellows, Hans thinks it looks like he’s inside a huge egg tapped open for a giant’s breakfast, the broken edge lifting slowly overhead to let the light in and lift him out in a huge spoon filled with yellow yolk. ‘I wonder if he cracked it on the big end or the little end,’ he asks himself, not knowing that a war was fought once over that very question. He sights the podium target one more time. It’s going to be an easy shot, for someone of his superior skill.

  He hears his father’s cello playing softly off to his right, his mother’s piano somewhere to his left, Nina’s cooing voice calling him back from behind. He hears his hounds woofing! in the fields in front of his parents manor house, born free to lope in-and-out among the dāsa slaves. ‘I’m the finger on the trigger. I’m an old man, a young man, an old woman, a wife and a mother and a child. I carry the weight of the Great Burning Wheel of the Fiery Cosmos on my Atlas shoulders. My place is here, my hour is come. Glory to the Celestial Imperium!’

  The parade square below Hans Schuler’s steeple blind is hung with green-and-white bunting, climbing around and up the base of the speaker podium like thick forest mosses on the Oetkert homeworlds of Schwyz and Unterwalden climb ancient Yew trees. In early light, under a cold mist of Yalto Lake morning fog, the square fills with tens of thousands of Rikugun in sharp, dress uniforms. They carry ceremonial, white masers and pistols in white mockleather holsters. A row of all white cannon readies to fire a twenty-one gun salute to Pyotr.

  Hans is inside a camo blind that’s perfectly concealing from all high security motion, light, sound, heat, and any other detector systems. It’s top-of-the-line, and specifically coded to block all Aral garrison penetrators. Adamu gave it to him, preprogrammed to hide Hans from his own sniffer bots and from MI and Rikugun security systems. Along a narrow side of the sniper blind are six clear bags full of dark yellow urine, hidden by scent camo from security patrols that come by three times daily. Or used to. Even knowing the patrols include two Adamu men under orders to look everywhere loudly and conspicuously but not to find anything, Hans chuckles to himself: ‘Still might have stumbled in here if the fools had used real dogs instead of those stupid, chemical sniffer bots.’

  Two days ago, the last patrol locked the roof access door as it left, declaring the Life Temple secured and sealed. Adamu made sure of it, ordering three square klics around the dais into total lockdown in advance of Pyotr’s arrival. His security chief, a Loyalist to his core, is enthusiastic because he thinks that seals off the square and blocks all last minute threats. In fact, Adamu has instead locked the mad assassin Hans Schuler into a perfect, can’t miss shooting blind.

  The troops below are in tight formation. Some are waiting stiffly for their emperor to walk the ranks in review, after his speech broadcast live to the whole Imperium. Well, as live as you can ever get using lightspeed delay bohr system coms. Others flex frigid fingers and toes, trying to stay warm in cold morning air that has the deep chill of Lake Yalto on it. They have one more hour to stand and stamp and flex and wait. One more hour until destiny takes a hand. So does Hans. But he’s inside a warm cocoon of moral certainty. He doesn’t feel the cold or damp like they do. Or fear, or worry about whether he properly polished his dress boots and a mock maser that Pyotr himself may inspect. He’s basking in the warmth of his God and divinely appointed mission. Hans is full of bliss.

  He’s going to sacrifice everything he is and has to the mission. His name, his estates, his wife Nina and their little son. He’ll do it because God tells him that he can end the war all by himself. He thinks of himself as a kind of all powerful priest, with a capacity for redemption of sin that he’ll dispense down his rifle barrel to all the Thousand Worlds of Orion. He’ll wash away the sin of the worlds in an instant, with a bright splash of blood and brains. ‘Glory be to God! Halleluiah!’ He left a note explaining everything to Nina, or trying to. She didn’t seem to try or want to understand whenever he spoke to her about God, about his anointed mission to save Orion from Pyotr. But the last night he saw her he made an extra effort. He wrote it out as best he could.

  It’s waiting in a tiny, silver love safe on her bedside bureau, timed to play an alarm tune one hour after Pyotr is scheduled to speak and Hans kills him. It’s written in his own hand on a faux parchment scroll, code sealed so that not even he can open it before the anointed hour of Pyotr’s death. He left it there the last time he packed his few things, rode up the Glarus elevator and boarded an empty ammo ship on its return run that took him to Kestino to see Field Marshal Onur and Major Winter.

  My Dearest Nina,

  I kill one man to save a billion. It is to you, my love, and to the good peoples of the Imperium, that I must define the reasons for my actions. I am doing this with the full knowledge that I’ll be soon in the quiet arms of Death, unless my God has a second task for me to complete. This I must do. Pyotr Shaka Oetkert III, by my hand and mine alone, at dawn two weeks from this writing, shall be dead in Yalto on Aral.

  Pyotr is a man of no conscience or desire for peace. He longs only for war and power. He is the reason so many hundreds of millions of our youth are dead, and over five billion are dead across Orion. He is the reason our innocent youth are corrupted by war. He cares not for the peoples, only for his befouled vision of the Thousand Worlds. Deluded and afraid, he has sent educated thinkers to the tombs, innocents to die at the black walls, and set the guilty on high sustained by unearned rewards.

  Do not our peoples dream of God’s liberty, equality, and brotherhood? This rampage killing we call the Liberation War is not for liberty or for fraternity. Yet give it time, and the new world we have all been dreaming of will come, The Celestial Imperium, the Empire of God on All the Earths. I have seen it! Let this new world not be built atop the rotting bodies of our friends, or upon corpses of murdered farfolk. Murder of the peoples will not bring peace! Fear and hatred will split God’s children asunder, until all our worlds are destroyed. Until this man is silenced by my hand, you, my love, will live in danger. A single sliver of what is today deemed a wrong thought may send you into torture, into shame, and to your death. This cannot stand. This will not stand. I therefore make a stand.

  To my farfolk
friends, when you read this know that I was once frightened of you for my homeworlds. I believed that you terrorized and executed my countryfolk without just cause, then I saw how we tortured farfolk without any better cause. I see that God’s Revolution is possible without the deaths of billions. It requires only the death of one. We may yet live across the stars from you in peace, when I have done the deed. Then we may all live within the blessed Celestial Imperium. I hope you are able to understand these beautiful words I write.

  I’ll avenge the deaths of innocent men, and women too. I’ll save the lives of billions more. My hand will show no hesitation as it sends a bullet toward Pyotr’s heart. When he’s dead, I’ll stand by his body waiting for my own death by the swift injustice of his cruel men. Let there be peace. In two weeks, as the murderer draws his last breath, there will be peace.

  Your loving husband,

  Hans Schuler, Friend of Dogs,

  Prophet of the Celestial Imperium.

  ***

  It starts to rain. A late autumn, Yalto drizzle. There’s a hard chill to the day. Hans cocks his head a bit to one side, listening for the dawn chorus to begin. It seems even the song birds are staying inside, heads tucked under wings, keeping feathers and their powder dry on a miserable morn. Those that are still alive, that is. Which isn’t many. Silence. Stillness. Songless. Soulless. Adamu’s laser dome killed most of them a week ago, in bursts of red and green light that ended in burnt flesh and feathers, in song and flight interrupted by piercing death cries and a final fall from air and from grace. He gave the order at his security chief’s request, to prevent disguised assassin drones overflying the square with fine poison sprays in carbyne beaks or lethal lasers hidden in beady black eyes. There are no insects buzzing this morning, either.

  Only the square below has noise, The slap! of white gloved hands smacking! onto the cream stocks of ceremonial masers held by rank upon rank of drenched, miserable looking troopers in crisp green dress uniforms with white caps, loops and sashes. The stamp! of hardnailed boots on flat cobblestones as they come to formal attention. The soft whirring of hover guard bots circling overhead on cushioned air, recording live vids; others listening for sounds incongruous to the place and moment that might suggest a hidden threat. The barking of NCOs, shrill as quick terriers on a dark green moor moving a lazy flock of sheep, with stern officers looking on. A hard ramming of star shells into breaches of 21 all white, stubby barreled ceremonial cannon. Loud clangs! as crews close up the bright breeches and come to stiff attention. The howitzers are parked wheel-to-wheel, thick barrels in a perfect row at one end of the square. They look to Hans like shark’s teeth stuck in black gum carriages.

  He rubs his own dirty teeth with a finger. He listens without real interest to brassy notes of a regimental band hastening through its final, mimed practice. Watches a little man dressed in all white wave a silent stick, then tap tap it in irritated authority on his score and notes. The others are playing without a score, so they make howlingly funny faces as they search for memorized cues they have forgotten, flail at mistaken bowings, check mental notations they made in too much haste in the middle of the night after way too much gin. One violinist is tapping, plucking, playing sul tasto, and air bowing madly. It’s oddly noisy, and tells everyone that he hasn’t fully learned his part. Others make nervous repetitive actions as they wait on the conductor’s word and Pyotr’s arrival. An oboist is looking intently at his reed, rolling it over and over between his finger and thumb. A cellist is adjusting his seat, which can’t be moved because it’s bolted down. A cymbalist is trying to fix in place a stray bit of hair, but bangs! her instrument, startling a row of snare drummers who look at her with disdain.

  At last the conductor raises his arms in an over flourish, holds them there a long moment, and gives the penultimate signal. Ambient noise stops, replaced by expectant silence buffeted only by an inshore breeze coming off Lake Yalto. The string section and six tall trumpeters stand. A return to perfect silence, then a final stick signal breaks the creased orange Yalto dawn with sudden brass and trumpets, drums and tympanis, flutes and whistles and gongs. And two dull, fat tubas sounding like baleful whales giving underwater birth to escaping calves. Hans grimaces. No birds or insects are disturbed into the damp air overhead by this sudden clash! and clang! of oddly discordant sounds, pretending to glorious harmonies this second rate orchestra and composition can’t achieve.

  An honor guard of the Palast Wache in brilliant yellow, with white gloves and humming masers, enters from the rear stage. It moves with measured pace toward the podium and takes position. Royal Canaries stand under the bashing music, forming two yellow columns leading straight to the dais. They make a striking contrast to the sea of green and white below. Hans raises his long gun, sighting along its barrel to the podium. He watches blue crosshairs frame the perfect shot inside golden liquid crystal, finding and fixing a sure target space which Pyotr’s head will fill up in another minute. His line-of-fire is unobstructed by the bird guards, each chosen by Pyotr for short stature. It’s a fact of imperial vanity that means they’re all too low to the podium to obstruct a killer’s line-of-sight and firing lane. They may as well be real canaries for all the good their guardianship will do their only slightly taller master.

  The conductor is waving his arms furiously, over dramatizing a truly awful composition which doesn’t need his noiseless stick to become any worse. It’s a worship hymn about glorious and unsurpassed vales and seas and worlds of the Imperium, a celebration of the Imperator and Shaka-Oetkert dynastic line. It’s always played at state occasions like this one, each time grating on anyone with any taste at all who’s unfortunate enough to be in the room or on stage; who must suppress a grimace, force a smile, and nod in false and politic appreciation.

  Today, the royal performance audience is limited to Admiral Adamu, other top rank Rikugun and Kaigun officers, and the first sons and mothers of several hundred First Caste families. They’re in Yalto to finalize claims to newly assigned estates, expropriated from tens of thousands of dead or deported Aral landowners. The grants are huge, with original smaller Aral plots combined into vast fazendas on the Imperium model, granted by Pyotr to the Old Families. It’s a war bribe Takeshi didn’t have to recommend. This kind of plunder comes naturally to Pyotr and the High Castes. The official transfers will happen in a separate ceremony, following his anniversary speech to all the Imperium.

  ***

  Into the crescendo steps Pyotr Shaka Oetkert III. He’s dressed to kill, and to be killed, in a dark green ermine robe with white fox fur lining. It flows on the ground behind him as he walks, or waddles. He’s getter fatter every year. The robe is newly made and large, so it fits him better than his aging and frayed blue ermine favorite. To Hans, peering intently at his target via the range scope and small vid screen that sits below the breech of his long gun, he looks like a too fat groom strolling to an altar from whence the bride has fled. Pyotr ambles slowly to the bottom of the podium steps. He looks angry that he must lift his heavy leg up and set it down, three times on each side. Laboriously, he reaches the podium level and steps forward. Massed troops below the dais give their warlord emperor three rousing cheers. “Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!”

  He looks out magisterially at 50,000 worshipful troops in the square, in tight ranks and perfect files in front of the ceremonial canons. He has never worn a Rikugun uniform, yet he’s commander-in-chief over hundreds of millions more men than these. He has never worn a Kaigun uniform either, yet he arrived in Aral orbit in a battleship, escorted by two heavy cruisers, 10 light cruisers, and 25 small escorts. He holds titles as a grand admiral and supreme commander to hundreds more warships, to vast invasion fleets and supply convoys, to a spread out merchant marine that plies a thousand space lanes across half Orion.

  He was born to this.

  He never earned a day of it.

  He knows nothing about command.

  He’s never seen a battlefield.

  That doesn’t hol
d him back at all.

  “Tranquillo, tranquillo.” Like a conductor who calms and settles the orchestra before commencing a symphonic performance, he pauses to let the command settle among nervous players. As calm returns, he bursts into a triple opening, dramatic as Beethoven’s Fifth: “Soldiers! Nobles! My subjects!”

  Ease back into an adagio: “I am come before you as a Conqueror for All the Ages, descendant of the Jade Eye, whom I equal in triumph, glory and conquest. I stand here as your most noble lord and master, to proclaim this world restored, along with all the worlds we’ve taken back, or taken away, from our enemies. Aral and all other Lost Children are forever and again joined to our holy heimat, our Fatherland of Sacred Worlds!” Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!

  “Fortune favors the brave, and I see that all here are blessed with courage. On the right and left two empires closed, yet you did not seek escape. With seas of stars on either side and moons and space lanes filled with enemies at your back, you never hesitated.” The rhythm of speaking becomes marcia moderato: “Here, you first met the enemy. Here, you first said ‘we conquer or die!’ Here, you earned the forest laurels of your forefathers, the gratitude of a nation, the respect of your sovereign, and the favor of the gods.” Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!

  “You made your way to this newly conquered place from worlds orbiting the Pillars of Hercules, from teeth stars of the Great Bear and scale stars of the Dragon. You came from the Hunter’s Spear and the Throne of Cassiopeia. Here on Aral, and a hundred more worlds, you planted flags of your forefathers even as I planted mine, as the Great Liberator. Here, you stood and fought the armies of our enemies. Here, you joined cause with our glorious dead. Here, you fought and overcame all odds and every foe.” Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!

  Now up the pace, to allegro: “Soldiers! I stand before the bravest of men! I stand before soldiers who have a thousand times earned my praises and will one day earn my gifts. On whatever side I turn my eyes this day I see nothing but men full of courage and energy. I see a veteran infantry and a brave artillery. I see my legions in miniature, drawn from all the gallant nations of my empire.”