Assassin

by Kali Altsoba

  Every man there appreciates the red irony of advice coming from Takeshi Watanabe, to hold off the SAC killing spree and suppress the blood price of the coup. They agree to it anyway. “As long as you’re certain that you can take the Curia down and take its forces out of the fight, without our having to eliminate their men as well as fight Loyalists in Rikugun and Kaigun.”

  “I’ll do more than that. I’ll bring them into our conspiracy.”

  “What? Why would they agree?”

  “They know me. The leadership trust me. I will promise the General Curia everything they want from the war. All that they asked of Pyotr, only with an assurance from the military that they’ll actually get it.”

  “We commit to an all out assault to take Amasia”?

  “Yes.”

  “What about the Broderbund? Do we move against them? They will not want to see SAC gain from the coup.”

  “I’ll bring Maximillian Kahn and the Brethren into the plan.”

  “How can even you do that, align the Broderbund and SAC? They don’t just despise each other, they’re blood enemies going back to the Red Purge!”

  “They both also despise you, and I dare say, every man in this room despises me. Coups are not made by lifelong friends, but by networks of shared interests acting in a passing moment. Success only requires that the leader of each faction knows the common interest and the decisive hour.”

  “We can agree on that with you, if on little else.”

  “You may find that we agree on much more than that, before we’re done. But leave all of it aside for now. We’ll have time to sort other shared enemies later, with Pyotr dead. The first order of business is to kill the emperor. We can deal with the other hydra heads in due course, after we secure control.”

  The tall gull is feeling chuffed. His fat friend? Not so much. He’s nervously preening and plucking at himself, finding worms of doubt among his ruffled feathers. The quiet four star intercedes. “A question hangs like a dagger in the air between us: how will you do it? Kahn is far more of a mystery than vain Pyotr. He’s gears within gyros, inside turning wheels of hidden motives. It cannot be so easy to turn him to our purpose and get him to accept an alliance with SAC.”

  “It will not be easy. In fact, it will be anathema to him!”

  Namid concurs: “I don’t know which will repel that evil priest more, to join with officers in Kaigun and RIK or with SAC? Together, we made the blood purge of his Brethren for Pyotr’s mother.”

  “It will repel him mightily. Yet I promise, he will join us.” Takeshi doesn’t say it, because he can’t. These men would kill him if they knew: ‘I have the fanatic in my pocket, thinking I’m the godhead. He’ll follow wherever I lead.’ Instead he says: “He’ll join us for the same reason the General Curia won’t move to avenge any of its men we take out in the first hours after Pyotr dies. He’ll join us for the same reason we are all meeting here today, because he wants our common enemy dead, although for obscurantist reasons of his own.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “He believes it’s the duty and the right of the Brethren, and only them, to assassinate the sovereign. He’ll join because we’re going to let him kill Pyotr.”

  Captain Namid is unconvinced. “That will flatter him, yes, but is it enough? I don’t think so. He will want more than to strangle Pyotr.”

  “You’re right to doubt. In the end, he’ll join us because, with his silk cords still wrapped around Pyotr’s throat, we’ll let Maximillian Kahn declare the next emperor. We’ll let him decide the succession, as generations of cowls did before him. He’ll leap into our conspiracy to play that role in history once again.”

  The stunned silence seems to last forever. Finally, a cruiser captain asks it. “Aren’t we going to proclaim a Provisional Military Government? We’re going to kill Pyotr and replace him with a new emperor? What is gained from that?”

  “Onur tried for military government and failed. It was a change too far. We must remove the hydra heads of the old system, but one at a time. We can’t do so much beheading all at once. Let us start with Pyotr, and go from there.”

  “Assassination as political surgery? Kill the man, not the office. Change the regime, but not the system of government?”

  “Exactly. We propose a coup, no more. We’re not revolutionaries here. SAC and the Brethren are the revolutionaries. They see Pyotr’s death as a first step, where we want it to be the end.” The older men nod in agreement. The younger ones are more suspicious because of who this man talking really is. But he has them nailed. They’re not revolutionaries. They’re all reactionaries. ‘I will make the revolution later, without you. I will overthrow it all.’

  He’s in total control, outlining strategy and tactics, shaping the end game far in advance. “We leave the familiar dynasty on the throne, to reassure the peoples. Our coup must be political, focused on Pyotr, not socially broad or revolutionary.”

  “We blame everything on one man?”

  “To start. We’ll not threaten the continuation of the old regime. That would arouse powerful interests against us too soon. We’ll kill in the old style, the accepted way: a swift strike to remove the monarch of the moment.”

  “It could work.”

  “It will work. Then we will have the time needed to gather forces strong enough to take out the Brethren and take down SAC.”

  “That’s why we’ll let Kahn kill him with green ropes?”

  “Yes, to quiet traditionalists who object to any other kind of royal death, as so many did when they thought a sniper killed him.”

  “But who will Kahn choose?”

  “He’ll never consider anyone outside the Oetkert-Shaka line. He’ll reject Pyotr’s sister, Chiyoko, of course. No cowl will propose a woman. And he’ll want someone he’ll think he can control.”

  “Who then?”

  “He’ll see only one choice, the same choice that Onur made before creeping radicalism got the better of his judgement: Prince Friedrich, dimwit prince of an inbred line leading back to the Jade Eye.”

  “Yes, that’s acceptable.” It’s Captain Namid. “Onur was right, before he was wrong. With Friedrich on the throne, we will decide policy. Alright, I agree to help eliminate SAC and the Brethren, after Kahn first kills Pyotr.”

  “Very good. But what then? Does this group, let’s call it the Compact, have a policy for what to do next, captain, once Pyotr is dead and you are in control?”

  “We do, again deferring to what Onur planned.”

  Takeshi reveals just how much he knows about these men. “With the leaders of SAC and Purity dead or rotting in military jails, with the cowls banished to the Ordensstaadt again, you will send feelers to the last Neutrals in the Globular Clusters. You’ll ask their diplomats to approach the Alliance for you, to initiate secret talks. You’ll negotiate an end to the war from a position of maximum strength, while we occupy more than a hundred of their worlds and the Alliance has yet to take a single one of ours.”

  “You are well informed, indeed.”

  “It’s a good plan, gentlemen.”

  “Yes, but do you agree?”

  “I concur.”

  “As do I.”

  “And me.”

  “So say we all?” A chorus of ‘ayes’ fills the room.

  “So let it be done.”

  Fists pound the oak table in affirmation. One general stamps his booted foot. The all white admirals puff up medaled gull chests, raise their heads in mutual agreement, and Kee-oh! Kee-oh! Behind the glittering Jade Throne crime and barbarism lurk in the Imperium, and always have. They are the most powerful forces holding the fractured empire together. Only criminals and barbarians can survive the twists of court politics and high murder, of envy and plotting and too long remembered blood feuds. The descent into nihilism is nearly complete.

  Murder

  Takeshi tells only one man what he truly intends, secure in the knowledge that no one who is anyone will believe the crude thug Albert
Naujock, should he betray his master and spill the plan. Besides, he knows he won’t. Naujock is less loyal than a stray dog, but reliable. Like a wild wolf in a cage, he’s wary and dangerous but knows where today’s meat comes from. And tomorrow’s. It comes up when Naujock asks permission to kill a rival merc, who’s challenging for leadership of routier bands that do wet work for Takeshi.

  Naujock was nearly beaten to death on his native Aral, before he went into exile in the Imperium and became a contract killer for SAC, then for Takeshi. His smashed and crooked nose gives his speech a pronounced whistle. Poorly repaired, ripped, scarred lips impede his ability to shape rounded sounds, so that talking reduces to short phrases, wobbly vowels, missing consonants. It doesn’t help that he’s also really quite stupid. Highly skilled killer, though.

  “I gawds da kill ’im, boss. Ee’s lak a wock in mah bood.” He spits a stream of blue chaw juice. It hits the rim of a brass spittoon. Phissshh, clang!

  “I have no special use for this man, so you can kill him.”

  “Whan, boss?”

  “Not yet. It’s much too soon. He’ll be useful for awhile longer.”

  Takeshi talks at him more than to him, perhaps indulging a need to voice his inner dialogue, to praise himself aloud by saying what no one else knows or is ready for? He thinks of these talks with Naujock like he’s Plato, speaking to his dog. “First, I must manipulate all the factions to kill Pyotr and make a coup. You can indulge your private murder after that.”

  “Whan, boss?” He’s like a child asking for a candy.

  “When I permit it! You can bury this vendetta inside immense corpse fields of the slow rolling revolution I intend to make. Patience until then. Stay low. I don’t want you to attract too much attention.”

  Takeshi has killers all around him. Naujock knows this but can’t understand why, if his men are not to be used with more purpose and more often. He has said it before. “Yu pays dem a lod, boss, jus da sid awound.”

  “It won’t be long. My partners have already begun to quietly kill each other. Each faction in the Compact thinks that it’s securing its position with murder of the others, before we make the coup. They don’t know that they are creating the first hints of widespread chaos I will need to eliminate them, one-by-one.”

  “Youse gonna muhdah dem awl, boss? Afda we kill Pie’dor?” Naujock’s eyes light up with malice and blood lust. Phissshh, clang!

  “Yes, all of them. First, we kill a few choice generals and admirals, whom I’ll replace on the General Staff and in key homeworld and field commands with men I have long cultivated.”

  “Ah dey yur cwonies?” Naujock likes the archaic word ‘cronies.’ He thinks it sounds better than ‘thugs,’ more man-of-the-worlds. He heard it on the memex.

  “Staff officers. The third or fourth in line in a command HQ, men that I put there with orders signed by Pyotr over the past five years. Seconds are always too loyal to the man directly above who elevated them. In a few cases, I’ll have to move a man currently fifth or sixth in line.”

  “Dads weal smawd. Dad widdle wock in mah bood ah tol yu ‘boud? Ee’s mah nubah twee. Fukah!”

  “So, you do understand. Seconds are where they are because they’ve shown their bosses that they’re no threat. Lower men are more dangerous. Some have foresight to see that the way to seize command is not to serve but to leapfrog. These days, they know they can make the jump by making an alliance with me.”

  “Dees gies ah yurs, deys awny gud?”

  “All are hard men who’ll owe me when they finally arrive at the top. That will be useful later, when I turn the military against the monks and mice.”

  “Ha! I luvs id whan yu calls dem dad! Bud how, boss? Dads a lodda dwoads da cud, even foh mah men. An’ deys weal gud ad id.”

  “You need kill but a few, to get things started. The rest of the officer targets will die on SAC blades and by the cowls’ poisons. We need only sit back and count the dead.” He composes a quick haiku in his head, then tries it out on Naujock:

  ‘When counting dead men,

  its easiest to use a

  quantum computer.’

  Naujock ignores the versifying. He always does. It hurts his head whenever he tries to figure out the boss’s subtleties. Naujock only thinks and talks in prose, and barely even that.

  “Den whad?”

  “I’ll do in the true Purity fanatics in Sakura-kai.”

  “Gud, I hade dose gway wads!”

  “Next I’ll purge heads of the Old Families and eliminate the Masters of the Worker Guilds. We need only set feral cats among pigeons, then wait and watch the carnage as the oldest hatreds in the Imperium move into the open and seek final resolution of ancient quarrels in new bloodbaths.”

  “I hade cads. Doh dey gud foh killin wads.”

  “Your talent for misapprehension and the non sequitur is unmatched in all Orion.”

  “Whad?”

  “All you need to know is that when the time is right, I’ll remove the hooded men of the Broderbund not just from power but from the Universe.”

  “Wemove, boss? Wads dad weally mean? Moh wuk fuh duh boys?”

  “You shall see, gunsō. For now I must keep that secret even from you, my best killer.” ‘And my most trusty house idiot.’

  “An’ duh mice?”

  “Ah, the gray men. They’ll be driven from the occupied worlds and crushed here inside the Imperium. Any who survive the war I’ll bring down on them will be sent to Amasia to martyr gloriously, dying in green along the black for the absurd Pure Revolution to which they aspire.”

  “Wy dyu durn on Pie’dor, boss? Wads chanj?”

  “He’s going to die.”

  “Ah noh. Youse gonna kill ‘im.”

  “No, I mean the fool is doomed, no matter what I do. He has burned far too many bridges, insulted too many powerful men, let me destroy too many careers and Old Families in his name, replaced too many actual Loyalists with men of my choosing. But above all else, he’s incompetent. He’s going to lose the war. Everyone who matters or knows anything at all knows that. The nation won’t let it happen. Its self-anointed representatives will kill him first.”

  “Soh ids all abou’ duh wah?”

  “Isn’t it always? War has a way of clarifying things. It’s why we fight them: to rediscover the real truth of power and power relations in a given moment in history. War lets us see the limits of power, bringing all things back into balance that have drifted too long and too far from reality.”

  “Whad?”

  “Why do I bother? Listen carefully: if I don’t kill Pyotr and take advantage, you lunkhead, someone else surely will. This star nation will not accept that he leads it to ignomy and defeat, especially after so promising a start. It’s all coming to a head. He’ll not survive this coming year.”

  “Ees dun fur? Gud!”

  “What unfolds in the next months will not be happenstance. It will all be to my plan, a grand strategic symphony to set the Imperium ablaze with chaos. I do not intend just to survive Pyotr’s assassination and the coming coup d’état. I plan to emerge triumphant over all things.”

  “How youse gonna do id? Yuse jus one man.”

  “I can tell you this, gunsō. I’ll attack all the old interests at the top, even as I undermine local supports of the system at the base, in the barrios and among the lower orders and outcastes. When I’m done squeezing the Imperium at both ends, the whole rotten edifice of the empire will come crashing down.”

  “An’ den?”

  “Then I alone shall be left standing, to rule the rubble.”

  Naujock wants to ask what the point is of ruling over rubble, but he’s not quick enough. Phissshh, clang! It’s his last spit. The chaw is done. “How’s ken yah be shuh, boss?”

  “It’s what all revolutions do: take a wrecking ball to everything, the good of the old regime along with the bad. Afterward, like all winning revolutions before me, I’ll proclaim the start of a New Age of moral reform; say that I’l
l rescue desperate peoples from the chaos that I will make all around them. Like a white haired, Old Worlds prophet, I’ll promise to lead them into the shining uplands of newfound prosperity and moral redemption.”

  “Youse gonna….”

  “Don’t interrupt! I’ll promise radical social change to workers, reaction to the Old Families, guns and ships and more war to the military. No lie will matter when I pull the reins to all their bits, turning them where and when I choose. I’ll promise to restore order and security, but at the price of absolute power even the Jade Eye never had. I shall rise as a Leviathan out of their fear.”

  “Levi … whad?”

  Takeshi ignores him. He’s wrapped up in his own rhetoric. “It’s the way of all revolutions. The way of all worlds, even the way of all flesh. I am the lever that moves a Thousand Worlds.” Naujock sees that Takeshi is no longer talking to him. Besides, he’s so utterly lost in a blizzard of too many and too big words, he gives up. He searches his pocket for another chaw.

  Takeshi strokes his own ego until he climaxes with amour propre. “By the time the peoples realize that I’ve replaced Pyotr’s tyranny over them with a greater tyranny of my own, there’ll be too many of my bought, handpicked men in places of power and intimidation to stop me. I won’t just control the law and all courts, the police and the state. I shall be the law and the state.”

  “Dads gud, boss. Dad hasda be gud.” Naujock finds the missing blue chaw stick in a cargo pocket on his utes. He lifts it up and bites off a large piece.

  “The chaos I shall make will leave the peoples too exhausted and fearful to want another change. The faithful and secular will turn to me in fear of each other. Rich will fear the poor, as they always do, only more so, because they will have seen me arouse unwashed to mass violence. The poor will return to their inevitable, timeless envy of the rich, but in deeper despair, having felt for a moment that it all could change. Just before I snatch away their hope and ascend to total power.”

  “Whad aboud duh wah, boss? Youse gonna keep id goin’ afda yu win on Kes’deeno?”