Assassin Read online

  ***

  As he lies in bed beside Chiyoko, barely a month after the revelation courier arrives, the thought of a great prophesy about to be fulfilled in his own lifetime has Kahn shaking and breathless. ‘Can it be true? Has the High Council found the true Arahitogami, after sixty centuries of searching? In my own lifetime, I scoured the Corpus Hermeticum for decades. I thought I was close once, before I came here. Yet this message says that I wasn’t. How did I miss it?’ His pride as a scholar is engaged, and perhaps also a little fear and guilt for what he did as a younger man to a little boy, abandoned by his father and trapped in Kahn’s cruel care on Fates. ‘No matter that I failed. My apprentice meets success! We’ll now discard the Oetkerts as the useful imposters we always knew they were. Gods bless all Brethren and the Holy Arahitogami!’

  The thought of it fills him with strange excitations. Chiyoko notices, as they lie beside each other talking of murders and manipulations and machinations to come. Kahn twitches excitedly under green silk sheets, as they both look straight up through a wide, transparent armor skylight that shows them half of radiant Orion. A clear view of the stars is aided by surrounding dark on a fortified island far offshore on Lake Isis, away from Novaya Uda’s sprawling pollution of lights.

  She mistakes his religious ecstasy for carnal interest. It’s an error she makes often with Kahn, which he enjoys without ever letting on. He has discovered, moving inside Chiyoko, a wild new passion. A kama he never knew before his 100th year, because he thought it was easier to abstain than to be moderate when it came to women. Even now, as she spreads her legs with feigned delight and he rolls over and on top to mount her, he doesn’t stop thinking about the Final Prophesy.

  ***

  The deepest promise of the Corpus Hermeticum has been penetrated, brought thrusting up into life, demanding fulfilment with the same urgency as the throb in his loins that he longs to release but still holds back. He failed to see it for decades, not until an extraordinary finding was rushed to him from Terra Deus, coded in covert optical communication protocols and even more secure Mysteries of the Faith. Written in ur language, it is utterly impenetrable by Pyotr’s codebreakers. Yet, the truth is plainly written in the holy texts. ‘The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the deaf will hear, the dead will be raised up, and the poor will greet the Divine Man in joy.’ Albeit, it’s plain only to believers in papyri steganography never before exposed, not in a thousand digital examinations. It clears before his sight like a visual puzzle that, once revealed, never again hides its secret.

  Kahn sees the truth of prophesy everywhere he looks now. Even in the old places in sacred texts he searched for years, over nine vain decades. Yet, there it is! As perfect and clear to him as the Face of God! He sees it in too familiar geomancy tables, and in digital papyri full of ancient auguries sent to him from Terra Deus in utmost secrecy. It’s the ultimate discovery of the greatest truth held close by the Black Faith, and it lies before his devout eyes as he prays.

  It was his apprentice who did it! He takes a teacher’s satisfaction in that. The truth of the Corpus Hermeticum is discovered by a young monk, a mere 20 years frocked, whom Kahn taught the secret ur language on Fates. He then hand picked the young scholar to be his successor as Principal Divinator of the High Council, over objections at his tender age and postulant status by many. He was barely in his thirties when Kahn left Uruk Library in his hands. He went to work in its chilly archives, emerging two decades later in wondrous excitement to ask the High Council if his old teacher might verify his immense discovery.

  Almost 8,000 years old, the key passage was scratched into papyri with a reed pen beside the Stone Circles at Nabta Playa in ancient Egypt. It’s one of the best known Corpus texts, because it speaks directly about the Arahitogami. Kahn has read it a hundred times before. Only now it’s decipherable with aid of a secret horologion that no longer hides its secret. The ancient liturgical book was etched as a terra cotta astrological disk, then forgotten in the Order’s caves and vaults for millennia. The young Sword Brother stumbled on a reference to it in a secondary archive on Fates, while looking for something else entirely. The horologion is so old it was almost effaced by erosion as it lay in plain sight, indecipherable for seven millennia before interstellar travel was even conceived and achieved. That rare fact alone is enough to confirm its divine truth to Kahn!

  “It’s a true miracle,” he says aloud as he reads back and forth between the source text and astrological starcharts, rotating on a digitized holo reproduction of the clay plaque that tumbled out when he tore open the courier’s package nearly a month ago. His careful rereading of the young scholar’s work confirms that the Arahitogami can’t be an Oetkert; a fact long believed and longer hidden by the High Council, even from loyal Brethren. The brittle parchment and terra cotta disk miraculously foretell that the future Divine Human must be native born on an Ordensstaadt world, in the midst of waiting Faithful.

  The key text: ‘Pharaoh shall be found in a place of holy devotions far from Egypt, residing in an oasis of Faith under the fortieth rising of Sopdet, also called Sothis by the peoples of the reeds.’ Check a standard starchart program, adjusted for time’s passing and looking up from Old Earth’s past location easily finds Sopdet, the Sirius or Dog Star. ‘Look for Pharaoh in the company of holy men.’ That must mean the Brethren, for all other men are vile. ‘Find him in the constellation Sah, which northern river people call The Hunter.’

  The only possible meaning of the text and starcharts is that the Arahitogami will be born with Sirius ascendant in the constellation Orion, the star pattern as seen from Old Earth, not the more vast Orion spiral arm as was falsely assumed by Broderbund scholars, including Maximilian Kahn, for six millennia. And there’s more: the old southern constellation is home to the Ordensstaadt! His excitement builds, as it does each time he reaches the key passage in the newly translated and deciphered text. Next comes a clarion of warning against false prophets and old pretenders: ‘The final Pharaoh does not cradle from a branch of a withered and false olive tree. The fruits of Ra, the Sun God, who is Horus of the Two Horizons, are lush. The petals of his strong green tree are plump with water that will irrigate the dry soul of Egypt and all the lands of men.’

  So, not an Oetkert, and not from the deserts and volcanic wastes of Kestino. A new man for a truly godly dynasty, Corrector of Error. That much is obvious in the latest, unveiled revelation. A short passage later, the rediscovered augury gives the last clue and exact place of birth of the Arahitogami, in language that’s as clear as fresh rainwater. At least, it is to those like Kahn with an unquerying mind and wholly faithful eyes to see it. Each time, it sends him into rapture. ‘You shall know the final Pharaoh by his golden skin and raven hair. He shall rise alone and unaided, brightest star in the firmament, borne up out of the Oasis of Fate and Learning.’ That narrows it to a self made man, not a noble, a gold hued descendant from one the three GDM founder peoples of Kagoshima, Nagoya, or Yokohama. But not from there. He must also be a man steeped in Black Faith lore and learning that can be found only inside the Ordensstaadt.

  ‘He’s one of us! It had to be!’ As to where in the Ordensstaadt, he must hail from Fates, the key teaching center of the only true knowledge in Orion that’s worthy of the term. Buried there by God’s will, stored in the Great Uruk Library on Fates. But when is he coming to redeem the Thousand Worlds? Must the Brethren wait and suffer for more millennia? Is there any clue as to when the divine hour will strike? ‘He shall come to you in the 270th cycle of Sopdet, in the line of Sah.’ A check with the starcharts, reconfigured as constellations seen from the Nile Valley on the cradle world 8,000 years ago, two millennia before the Order was founded on the banks of the Nile. Yet it can’t be more certain. The Arahitogami, the Divine Human, is already here! He’s alive and walking the Thousand Worlds, here and now, in the 270th rising of the Dog Star above the galactic plain. Astronomy meets astrology, and rank superstition wins.

  But who is he?
>
  How do we find him?

  How will we know him?

  How to tell the false god

  from the Divine Human?

  ‘He shall come to you alone. He shall combine male and female in a perfect union, walking in a perfect body. And he shall bear the mark of three.’ The prophesy is near complete: the Arahitogami is born in this time, and with golden skin. He is born in the old constellation called The Hunter. Born on Fates. Born without family, he comes alone. He is perfect in form. And his body bears the divine mark: it displays the number three. ‘He shall be carried to you by the Ferryman. He shall become the Warrior. The Golden Pharaoh will lead God’s armies in the Last War. He shall redeem and remake all the Worlds.’

  His look is golden.

  His body is perfect.

  He was raised alone.

  His talent is unmatched.

  He bears the mark of three.

  His rise to power is unaided.

  The hour of ascendancy is now.

  There are many possible words that match those meanings, but only one living man matches them all, starting with both names that originate on Nagoya. Only one golden man was born on Fates in the anointed period who had a father not from there, who Maximilian Kahn knows was a shuttle pilot or ferryman. Only one man’s name translates from ur as ‘warrior.’ And the final piece, he knows most intimately that the boy he abused on Fates many years ago has a third nipple.

  ***

  Couriers come and go with evermore frequency. Each time, Kahn takes the encrypted packet into his study and closes the door on Chiyoko. He won’t come out for hours, once not for three days. Finally, he sends an urgent reply to the High Council confirming an apprentice’s discovery. “The reading is correct. A black haired boy with golden skin and a third nipple, sign of male-female union and his godhead, was born on Fates among the holiest of men, He arrived with the Dog Star ascendant in the first quadrant of the night sky. The Arahitogami is with us!” Takeshi ‘the Warrior,’ born to Watanabe “the Ferryman,’ is the true Arahitogami. He is ordained by scripture and prophesy to rule the Imperium and Thousand Worlds. He is Mother-Father of the Holy Age.

  Born of a concubine mother.

  Sired by a ferryman father.

  Raised alone in the worlds.

  Trained in ways of the Brethren.

  After 8,000 years, Pharaoh speaks:

  “So I have written. So it will be done.”

  Takeshi was educated by Kahn himself, studying Black Doctrine at Fates Seminary. The boy was noticed at the time by his schoolmasters, marked off for unusual brilliance and keen insight and self control. Neither Kahn nor the other scholar teachers who beat and raped him below ground guessed that he had a fateful destiny, and certainly not this one: a divine role in the Universe.

  Takeshi is in Novaya Uda when Kahn sends his confirmation to Terra Deus. Promoted to SAC general by Pyotr, he’s back from overseeing some filthy rear area mopping up on Genève, and a state visit to commission the Magni Gloriosa. Kahn trembles to see him, to tell him the holy news, to bow down before him in veneration. He’ll manifest the truth of the Black Faith to all Orion. For he is the Mahdi, the hidden and Final Imam, the Concealed Christ, the Siddhartha, the Arahitogami. The perfect, Divine Human who will bring moral order and purpose and Holy Kingship to Humanity and Correct God’s Error in Creation.

  Kahn’s ecstasy feels like possession, a total concentration of will and being in union with the divine. He casts aside doubt. He’s caught up in religious bliss that overwhelms knowledge that this man despises the Black Faith from which he violently apostasied as a boy on Fates. He wears SAC’s filthy uniform, the fatal gray cloth of the enemies of the Black Faith that defiles his Holy Person. ‘He’ll return to us. Revealed as Arahitogami, he’ll rise above, be the ruination of Pyotr and all Oetkerts, and of the Special Action Commandos. He’ll reject old ways of the Imperium once he learns what godly destiny awaits him, and that he shall rule the Holy Orders of the Brethren and All the Worlds.’

  “He is Bane to All Enemies of the Faithful. He’s savior of the Sacred Order of Hermetic Faith. He’ll do God’s Work in the Universe, cleansing Error on the way to the Holy Age. Hallelujah!” Kahn shouts it out in joy, his voice cracking in a shriek of excitement. Chiyoko runs in from the next room, half hoping to see the wizened old cowl dying in great pain on the flagstone floor. She thinks the look of utter rapture on his face is disgusting, and dangerous.

  That night she tries to prise information from him, to learn why his mood is so light and what his plans are. She doesn’t know what’s in the secret message he just sent to Terra Deus, but she knows it went out coded in covert opticals and the indecipherable script of ancient deva nagari. He says nothing, despite her purring seductions and calculated strokings. He can’t and won’t reveal to her that ancient texts foretell that she’ll never sit on the Jade Throne after Pyotr, that she won’t survive what the prophesies speak of to him: Takeshi Watanabe’s twin destiny as Arahitogami and Tennō. He will be God’s Warlord, leading the blessed Imperium in its true purpose as the cleansing sword of truth. ‘What does she think? That we Brethren would tolerate another woman ruling over us? And no less than the daughter of the Red Dowager? She’s not as intelligent as I credited.’

  He’ll not share joy in fulfillment of long awaited prophesy with an Oetkert brat and betrayer, with the whore daughter of the Red Dowager, butcher Queen. He knows Chiyoko won’t survive the Incarnation. Already, he’s planning her murder alongside her brother’s. It will take time, but the foul act is certain. ‘The problem of the Oetkerts shall be solved, one funeral at a time.’

  The way forward is unfolding daily. Pyotr himself praises Takeshi in private meetings with Maximilian Kahn, when he receives him as Broderbund ambassador. He speaks highly of “his experience in anti-bandit operations on Genève,” and of his “many special and natural talents.” Pyotr doesn’t know who the man from Fates is, in fact or in the secret belief of Brethren. He hears only intelligence rumors and intimations of secret prophesies picked up in the Old City by Kempeitai spies. In quiet talks with Kahn within the Waldstätte Palast, poor doomed Pyotr even lets slip that Takeshi is a rising star inside SAC, a hard man the Tennō and Kahn might use to tame that wilding child and rebalance politics in the Imperium.

  ***

  That’s the moment Kahn knows what it is that he must do. He tells Chiyoko half the lethal plan that night, as they lie face-to-face post coitus. He reveals just enough to cull her thoughts and keep her cooperating against her despised brother. She listens to every syllable he whispers, agreeing when he pauses his soliloquy to hear assent, but revealing to him nothing of her own thoughts and plots. She subtly plays off his least suspicions of people they discuss, moving his distrust with a raised eyebrow, a seemingly involuntary gasp, a heartfelt sigh of feigned understanding. It’s all part of her Oetkert training and her mother’s special way.

  She remembers a talk they had when she was fourteen. “My daughter, when you plan to kill someone show them nothing, deny everything, and always counter accuse if they point the blame at you. Then strike down a surprised and bewildered foe. Even Jahandar might learn from we Oetkerts when it comes to killing. We have been successfully murdering our enemies, and it must be said also each other, for well over a thousand years.”

  “Mother, you’re such an awful tease! We haven’t murdered anyone!”

  “Sit, daughter. It’s past time that you learned the rules of this family, and how to rule. You may have to do it one day. If your brother Pyotr is indeed the weakling your father and I think that he is, you must rule in his place. The ruler comes and goes, the family and the Jade Throne is forever.”

  Pale light from Kestino’s blue ice moon scatters through the transparent armor skylight thirty meters overhead, penetrating deep into the monochrome bedchamber. A silvery luminance falls across Chiyoko’s face, lighting her false expression without revealing the unreadable mask she presents as Khan drones on about omens and
sacred books. He turns over and gropes at her, yet again. Her disgust at his touches and whispered affections denies her orgasm when they make the beast-with-two-backs. She lies inert, staring up to the skylight.

  As he rolls off her to sleep, she thinks wetly of a private plot. It begins with her hated brother dead and her sitting on the Jade Throne. It ends with her hands soaked in Kahn’s aged blood, with her plunging a silver knife over and over into his quivering, spreading, spilling gut. As she imagines Kahn bloody and squealing under her blade and Pyotr dead, she comes by herself, shuddering secretly under the covers. Then again. If the centagenarian beside her notices the movement he says nothing. Perhaps he’s asleep? Or is he just pretending?

  Chiyoko has her last will and declaration composed in her mind, a mix of the political and personal ready for upload with a time stamp release code the night her plan completes. The night her other coconspirator keeps his triple promise to kill Pyotr and put his sibling on the Jade Throne, reunite her with Friedrich, and let her kill Maximillian Kahn. Only she may strike the fatal blow. “I act for you, good peoples of the Imperium. My brother Pyotr sinned against us with evil men. Murderer of his own mother, despot over his brother and sister. He played on fears and hates, splitting you to pieces as mercilessly as the blades of Jahandar’s coldest killers chop millions. My brother had to be pushed from the Jade Throne. I believe that the Imperium can and will return to majesty. Listen to the beautiful words my Mother spoke as Regent, listen to me now, and we will save our star nation from the errors of her son. Pyotr Shaka is dead. I ascend the throne as the rightful Oetkert-Shaka heir. Let there be peace among us, so that we may better fight the farfolk who are our real enemies. Let us together make better war!”

  She didn’t want this war, but it’s here now. Like her mother, she’s a realist. She will continue the fight her peoples have spilled so much blood in, knowing that if she tries to stop it now they will rip her from the Jade Throne and tear her limb from limb, as jackals rip apart a gazelle. She looks up through the skylight at the brilliance of Orion’s spur smeared across the night sky like wasted ejaculate. She can almost see the larger, milky pinwheel turning. She imagines that she can. Everything and everyone in Orion is now in motion. Knives are whetted on stones. Poisons are leaking from secret vials. Chiyoko is dry and barren, but her future is wet and pregnant with vengeful death. All roads in the Imperium lead to murder.