Assassin Read online

  His erstwhile officers and troops flatly refuse orders and arrest him instead. He’s taken before Pyotr, then to a dank torture cell below ground. They bring his whole family down there. Within hours he’s crying and spitting up blood and the names of all his coconspirators, just as General Sanchez feared. He spits them all over his tormentors, begging them to stop beating his wife and release his granddaughter, after they’ve already savagely beaten his only son to death. They don’t even have to use the Broderbund’s infernal machines on him. By then, there’s heavy fighting underway overhead, in the city. For when General Sanchez hears of General Bazaine’s arrest he knows that he and his fellow plotters are all walking dead men. They race out from barracks in the lead of their troops and head for the Waldstätte Palast, heavy masers humming.

  By then, there’s heavy fighting underway overhead, in the city. For when General Sanchez hears of General Bazaine’s arrest he knows that he and his fellow plotters are all walking dead men. They race out from barracks in the lead of their troops and head for the Waldstätte Palast, heavy masers humming.

  “Better to die on our feet than be forced to our knees, under the guillotine or shot in front of Pyotr,” Sanchez says. “Call your troops to battle. Move out!”

  “Yes, better to die standing up than lying down inside some monk’s devil machine, with Pyotr’s damn Canaries watching. Open fire!”

  “I would rather die in battle than live to be an old fool like Bazaine! Let’s go, men! For the Imperium! For your families! Charge the Jade Gate!”

  “Get the incendiaries flying. Put the red rooster on the palace roof!”

  It’s over in three hours. Rebel armor is stopped in the square by handheld rockets, then by an armtrak counterattack from a nearby desert base. A wing of swooping Jabos called in from a Washi skybase finishes the red work. Over 3,000 bewildered infantry who go along with their trio of generals are cut down in front of the Jade Gate, which will not crack or break no matter how often it’s hit by armtrak shells and lobbed over bombs.

  It’s a quick operation, the countercoup, once they break the old general and capture his three partners in treason, two of them badly wounded in the fighting. Roundups of lesser men take place over another week. Innocent are swept up along with the guilty, as Takeshi accuses and strikes names off scrolled lists he takes out of a floor safe, committing men to judicial murder for secret reasons all his own. In his blood lust and anger at rebellion, Pyotr asks too few questions.

  Survivors are executed to a man. All fires are put out by the end of the first night, the bomb craters filled in within a week. Life in Pyotr’s capital and on the Waldstätte grounds soon looks almost normal to the untrained eye. City life resumes, seemingly undisturbed. On the surface. Below ground, screams and medieval tortures are underway, sadistically long drawn out. Maximilian Kahn himself oversees the torments of the lead conspirators, with Pyotr and Takeshi standing by his side nodding approval. This is not about extracting information. The coup is a fizzle. It’s over before it really gets started. This is pure cruelty.

  Good thing for the real Resistance this was not an authorized cell. Just three rogue active duty generals acting in haste, who are all captured and tortured to death but can’t give up names they don’t know. And one prideful retiree Pyotr watches hang naked, at the end of his dignity and a hemp noose. Spindly legs jerk in air like a beetle flipped over on its back. His wife and granddaughter are strung up beside him, already unmoving.

  ‘There hangs the last of your generals, Mother.’

  ‘You are grown cruel, my son. He’s just an old fool.’

  ‘Are you watching? Do you see him jerk and twitch?’

  ‘He served us loyally for 70 years.’

  ‘He was a traitor to the Jade Throne.’

  ‘You mean to you, Pyotr Shaka III.’

  ‘It is the same thing, Mother.’

  ‘No, my son, it’s not the same at all.’

  ***

  This wasn’t the missed chance, the great whiff. No outside aid could have helped an old man’s folly. Not when the plotters were so inept. When they had no follow up plan, no believable order of battle, not enough troops to hold the Waldstätte Palast even if they took it. A half hundred tanks and a few thousand infantry weren’t going to cut it. Not deep inside Novaya Uda, Pyotr Shaka’s well defended capital. Not with millions of preinvasion forces parked up-and-down Kestino’s four elevators and stacked in low gravity orbit, waiting at the mushroom platforms and the system Lagrange points for a ‘Go!’ order to start the Liberation War. That’s what Takeshi suggests Pyotr call his invasion of the United Planets of Krevo. And yet, on far off Kars and Caspia a year later, after the Fourth Orion War begins in the wake of the Krevan War, a thousand careers will end. Ten thousand. The public and the politicians across the western stars will insist on it, after they learn that armtraks fired on the Jade Gate and part of Rikugun rebelled.

  After the coup fizzles, no one can stop the ‘Go!’ signal for war arriving three weeks later out of a moonlet’s silence. Albert Naujock stands in a vacuum suit on a tumbling rock in the Sankt Goar system and sends Takeshi the infamous ‘Grandmother’s Dead!’ signal, confirming that the Bad Camberg false flag op is a total success. Innocent, ethnic prisoners dressed in stolen Krevan uniforms lie dead all round his feet. A broadcast is made. A long propaganda campaign kicks in, about how truly awful Krevans are and how unprovoked is this vile, sneak attack on the innocent and defensive Imperium. Ten days after that, fleets of warships and invasion troops cross the frontier with the United Planets.

  That’s how war comes back to the Orion spur.

  After nearly 300 years of the ‘Golden Peace.’

  It sneaks in the back door, opened by a lie.

  It starts with murder in vacuum, over a fucking rock!

  It sits there stupidly grinning, red wet and with its hat on.

  ***

  When Takeshi gets back from the Bad Camberg op he goes straight to Pyotr’s chambers. He’s told the first sons of the executed generals are still in charge of their family estates, while second and third sons hold on to valuable commissions as mid level officers in Rikugun and Kaigun.

  “Why not kill them all, and be done with their traitorous bloodlines?” he asks Pyotr, incredulous that the deed is not already done.

  “Bloodlines? You mean extended networks of the Old Families they come from? You surprise me, quoting that absurd Purity shit about bloodlines.”

  “It’s economical of speech. No more.”

  “Spell it out in full, next time. I have the time and patience.”

  “Very well. There’s a greater opportunity here than punishment. There’s a chance for political deterrence.”

  “I thought about that, but I don’t see how to do it. I need all the Old Families onside politically, for the war.”

  “I understand. Yet, I don’t, majesty.” It’s a rare admission for Takeshi. “They’ll accept that you hang whitehaired fathers but not accept disinheritance of the sons, who are now heirs to four convicted traitors?”

  “Exactly. The succession of formal title and estates from father to first son is everything to the High Castes. It’s sacred, untouchable. Lives come and go, but noble titles and hereditary lands are forever.”

  “If that is so, then that is precisely why you should make these Old Families pay not with the lives of the patriarchs alone, but with blocked succession of their first sons to the estates. That’s where the vital weakness lies, of the class.”

  “Interesting. Go on.”

  “You’re trying to punish the bad actors alone. But this is your chance to go much further, to punish the four traitors, yes, but also to control everything they leave behind. And much more.”

  “How?”

  “Set an example for all the Old Families by totally crushing these four. Wipe them out, first sons, second sons, daughters and mothers too. Hit the whole class where it really hurts, not by killing their patriarchs, who most in the old famil
ies want dead sooner than later so that they might succeed them. Take away pride. Take away titles. Seize their lands. Bring fear into their lives. End them.”

  “They’re the power class. They might revolt against me, against demotions and seizures of four well regarded families.”

  “To defend fresh caught men you’ll pillory as traitors and assassins? And in a time of war when all your peoples are rallying around you and the Black Eagle flag? You misread the moment, sire. They will not revolt.”

  “Hmmmm, perhaps not. You may be right: there may be opportunity to hide murder inside a purge. Perhaps this war I began can conceal broader purposes?”

  “Not from the best of them, but that’s a small number. Most will grumble and a few will dare protest, but in the end they’ll choose to see confiscation as a onetime punishment of four foolish miscreants who acted against their own interests, as other Old Families do not. Most will never see that, under the cover of war and accusations of treason, this act of smashing whole estates will set a precedent and establish the prerogative to your expanded power.”

  “You are right, again. So, let it be done. Make it known among all the Old Families that I’ll not be so merciful next time if any man in my military tries again to take me out and fails. They shall lose it all.”

  “Very good, sire.”

  “See to it.”

  “I will, but is there nothing more?”

  “What more?”

  “What if they try and succeed?”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “If you want them to try and fail this will do. But you must make it clear what will happen if they try to kill you and succeed. If not, you invite the trying.”

  “What is to be done, if I am dead?”

  “Threaten massive, merciless retribution as your legacy.”

  “Deter them with fear of my death?”

  “They should fear you dead more than they fear you alive.”

  “It’s a fair point. So be it. I decree that you will ensure my vengeance against the privileged classes should I die at the hand of one of their number. It will be made known that if that happens, you will burn down the High Castes.”

  “I’ll do it in your name, and to honor your memory. Will you announce it?”

  “Summon my scribe. This will be written into Final Law, proclaimed as my Will and Testament. Today, I name you Avenger. I decree your right and duty to exact blood vengeance from the whole class of Old Families to answer for my life, should any one move against me. So let it be written!”

  “If it is written, I will do it.”

  Pyotr is lost in the moment, sounding like his mother the Red Dowager and a hundred Oetkert-Shakas before her reign. “Make blood of the High Castes flow down the generations. You must rip all lands and titles away from them, as well. Through you, I shall reach up to stab the Old Families from my grave!”

  “I shall make red niles for you, sire.”

  “I expect no less.”

  “Yet, perhaps you should not wait so long?”

  “Again, too economical. Clarify.”

  “Move now, to preempt treason.”

  “Preempt? Crush more than these four families?”

  “Allow no one to conspire against you on the nightside of Kestino, as your family is wont to say.”

  “So, I should make a wider purge?”

  “I have your spies sounding out senior officers in Kaigun and Rikugun, in SAC and the Great General Staff that governs both. They listen for any spring treason to bud. If we trace it to the Old Families, I can act.”

  “Be sure no plots grow inside the High Command or SAC or Sakura-kai.”

  “None will go undetected or unpunished, sire.”

  “I’ll pluck out traitor weeds and dispose of them! I’ll take back their sons’ commissions. I’ll seize all Old Family titles and estates of anyone who dares even think of treason against me. Hurry your spies! I am eager for justice!”

  ***

  And so, with a word, Pyotr gives Takeshi power to threaten, intimidate and blackmail the Old Families of the Imperium. Gives him license to advance or break careers of their finest sons in the officer corps. Tells him to act with imperial power whether he lives or dies. Lets him choose whom to root out and cast out while “weeding the garden royale of my enemies.” Guilty or innocent.

  After it’s all codified, once Pyotr foolishly grants extraordinary post mortem powers to Takeshi, he has a sudden flash of doubt. Takeshi is the most amoral and devious man he has ever known. Exceptionally useful talents to a monarch on most days. But now, he threatens him in private. “Don’t dare fail me. Don’t dare betray me. You are one man, my golden child. I have many more men in service. Know that I have left alternative orders with the captain of my Washi as to what to do to you and with you, should yours be the hand that wields the final knife.”

  “Never, Lord Pyotr. How can you think or say it?” Takeshi almost fails to suppress an ironic smile. So does Pyotr. They’re both old hands at this game of scorpions, circling each other with raised tails of spite. Each knowing the other capable of the foulest murder and betrayal. Each valuing that virtue in the other, while using it to separate ends. Pyotr ignores Takeshi’s protest, since both men know it’s made falsely for form’s sake alone.

  Is it the beginning of his end? It need not be, should Pyotr see who his real enemy is. Should he be as wary and alert as he tells himself he is. If he can see past his need for golden advice and companionship inside his lonely cynicism. Should he recognize who the most dangerous traitor is, waiting at the center of a viper’s nest of conspiracy to murder him. Plotting his overthrow.

  Viper

  As the Krevan War continues, Pyotr seduces Old Families of the First and Second Castes. They support his aggression in exchange for new promises of a firmer domestic social order, with a harder knee by the state pressing down into the back of the dāsa slave class in the countryside and the workers in sprawling cities. He promises that he’ll enforce tighter labor laws and exert harder control over Guild Masters. Most heads of Old Families are appeased. They consent to breaking the Golden Peace with the Calmar Union. They consent to his wider war and hand over their sons to lead it, gladly accepting officer commissions.

  Third Casters he coopts with tens of thousands of awards of a new Order of the Black Eagle. It’s Takeshi’s idea, of course, that Pyotr should hand out titles and honors that cost him nothing, except hosting a biannual ceremony to flatter sycophants. At all Black Eagle events, you have to wear a special dark uniform laden with gold-and-silver braid, with lace cuffs flowing from under overlong, silk sleeves. People love it, especially New Families elevated by Pyotr into the Third Caste and the eagle’s black order. Family heads strut at Court like penned peacocks, without realizing the tame impression they make or their penning.

  Pyotr dotes on New Family ‘Black Eagle Knights,’ even as he’s careful to appear to consult sneering Old Families on his military programs. He reappoints a for-show-only Council of Elders. He controls and distributes perks and profits, decides the pace of all careers, doles out corrupt offices tied to his arms buildup. They take the bribes and embrace his plans, all the while saying that they despise his corpulence and have only contempt for his reign and abilities.

  Takeshi is playing a much longer game. He serves Pyotr’s wishes, yet he also promotes rising dissent with targeted, preemptive confiscations of Old Family properties and recall of old titles and commissions. He smirks at rising High Caste anger over harsh policies, even as he goads the monarch into decreeing them. As he sets out to demolish the foundation of the ancien regime, he composes a haiku about the social revolution that he’s beginning.

  ‘War’s horizon flash

  illumes a shattered jade stone.

  Dynasties go dark.’

  Guildsmen wanted greater representation and reforms ever since the death of Dowager Mary Oetkert, they suspect at Pyotr’s hand. They know that he’s far weaker than his mother, that Pyotr strai
ns to maintain control now that the terror of the Broderbund is gone from the foreground of daily life in the Imperium. For the first time in generations, Guild leaders see cracks in the Oetkert firmament, and all around the base of the Jade Throne. But the heads of Old Families and the High Castes want reform demands quashed, and Pyotr is far more afraid of them than of any city mob. He violently appeases the Old Order.

  It’s always the same. First, a knock on a guildsman’s door, then before he can answer a nailed boot coming right through it, splinters and fists flying around his head. The beatings are by press gangs recruited from the criminal classes, always led by some junior officer wearing Pyotr’s iklwa crest standing right behind the street toughs. That’s Pyotr’s growing private army, raised and controlled outside Rikugun on Takeshi’s advice. Usually, the man at the door has a hardon for power in his pants, a sadistic grin on his face, and a modular pistol already in his hand that he really wants to use. Unseen in the palace shadows Takeshi stands alone with a secret scrolled list, and strikes off another name. No one but him knows why, or how it fits inside his hidden plans.

  Some men are executed. Most are forced into military service instead. Inside a week of being arrested, former guildsmen and almost every common criminal finds that he’s pulling hard duty fifty bohrs from his homeworld in one of the new ‘Shaka’ or iklwa regiments. Takeshi sets them up for Pyotr, separately from the gray legions of SAC and green divisions of RIK. He’s building them into a private royal army, a Shaka Army. A real army, far beyond the praetorian guard of the Washi Corps and the efficient but too few Royal Canaries.

  Men are shanghaied into iklwa regiments, balancing against seven million SAC troops eager and earnest for Purity, and unknown numbers of dāsa troops hidden on Ordensstaadt worlds by the Brethren. Rikugun generals are wary of this force, despite their own control of 200 million troops. However raw, it’s a rival whose rising numbers and privileged access to military resources are beyond the traditional officer corps’ reach, which means also outside the Old Order and veto by the High Castes and Old Families. No one knows Pyotr’s intentions for his growing ‘Shaka Army,’ not least because he doesn’t really know his own. He’s blindly following Takeshi’s lead and advice, more so each passing day.