Velvet Box

Some months ago, a respected slaver and holder - one Marin Ankigher - awarded five hundred head of the finest indoctrinated slaves the Empire had to offer, to the PIE corporation as a reward for their peacekeeping operations in the Domain region. Soon after, the unthinkable happened - the Cross of the Sacred Throne Order medal, kept in the strictest of security in PIE Admiral Golan Trevize’s private estates and granted to the Admiral by the Emperor himself, was stolen. In time, the man behind this audacious theft came to be known as the Minmatar Hamish, however the perpetrators themselves remained shrouded in mystery...

“The fucking Amarr kill us with over-work and starvation… beasts like him kill us with a smile and a Kredit. You’d do well not to trust him or talk to him again.” - Garam Mbutu, Republic Navy Captain

Prologue

A single bitter tear crept down his unflinching cheek, disappearing in the sheen of sweat covering his tan, tension-creased face. The Minmatar warrior cupped his head in his hands, legs dangling from the side of a linen-draped hospital bed, and fingers tenderly tracing the recently sutured scar running from his brow along the crown of his once smooth head. It had been some time since he shaved, and coarse stubble rustled quietly against the stroke of his palm.

How had it all gone so completely to hell, Hamish wondered. His mind still felt hazy, swimming in painkillers. His bloodshot eyes came to rest on his personal effects, left on a nightstand by his bedside, the pistol holster calling to him with an inanimate object’s whispered promises of vengeance and release.

The Caldari had been taunting him all this time, Hamish realized, enlightenment creeping upon him slowly like a piercing sunrise greeting the still-shut eyes of a slumbering fool through his bedchamber window. The Caldari had planned this from the get-go, this snare of the human soul. His infuriatingly enigmatic words from so many years ago, received then as sage advice but tasting now of ill-concealed mockery, replayed themselves in the warrior’s memories like a broken record. He could not know now, whether the thoughts were his own, or the result of the digital demon now running roughshod in his brain.

“Someday”, the old man said, “as long as you steer along the course I have charted for you, you may find yourself looking to the ouroboros for inspiration."

A self-destructing serpent - at least the Caldari was considerate, mused Hamish, a pained smirk crossing his face. Concealed in the old man’s riddle from Agil station was the cure to this creeping mnemonic blight. First would come the cure, and then - swore Hamish to himself, praying to remember the oath in his next life - would come a stern chat with one Istvaan Shogaatsu.

A hospital intern stepped through the door just as Hamish brought his Republic Navy service pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger. The weapon’s report echoed through the hospital’s hallways, followed by the clatter of a dropped dinner tray. Were she not so fascinated by the seeping painting of blood, brains and short-circuiting cranial electronics now decorating the wall beside her, the intern might have screamed.



Three days earlier


The wine glass in Golan Trevize’s hand shattered.

“How did he elude us again”, he droned, not asking but stating. His aide, a nervous Nefantar fraught with concern over the broken glass now snowing from the Admiral’s grip, said nothing.

He smiled, taking pleasure in the intimidation. “It takes a lot more than this”, he murmured holding his un-injured palm to the light where the slave could see, “to cut a hand callused by war.”

Exhaling, he deflated back into his recliner. In his other hand, a velvet box with the lid open, and the faintest imprint of a cross in its soft inner bedding taunted him as it would each night he sat like this, poring over report after baffling report, and drinking until he could sleep. It had been months since the Cross of the Sacred Throne had been pilfered, and what little leisure time the old Admiral had was spent this way, chasing a tattooed ghost through the jungle of New Eden. Somehow, Hamish Ramatakhlan had become a ghost. Trevize had bankrolled professional trackers and locator agents - their noses to the ground for months, all they could return were scarce sightings of the terrorist, some occurring so far apart and within such short time spans of one another, as to be physically impossible without access to some form of science-fiction teleporter.

The aide tenderly scooped the fragments of glass from around his feet, his pristine white robes glowing in monitor-light. Golan eyed the brand on the dark-skinned slave’s wrist; the Holder’s mark which defined him as one of the infamous Mamet five-hundred, that accursed litter of livestock which began his descent into obsession. It was these five hundred purebred Minmatar slaves that prompted the theft of his medal, and with it his honour.

His still wine-soaked fist was about to come down upon the crouched slave’s head, when the desktop monitor before him rang. Flashing over the intel-sheets came the transmission window.

“Good evening, Admiral.” Like a nest of fucking snakes.

“How did you get on this line”, Trevize retorted impatiently. The monitor was only equipped for internal communications, and the shadow-clad ghoul leering at him from the other end of the connection was no member of his staff.

The stranger did not respond, but looked down and produced a small paper clipping, holding it to the scant illumination of the monitor. Some worlds, in their insistence to be quaint, still clung to traditions such as the printed press, eschewing digital news broadcasts in favour of the old rag one could take to the crapper. It was an article he recognized immediately by layout alone, without even having to read it. The headline had been burned into his memory - it was the Imperial Chamberlain, Dosuta Karsoth, making his statement that Golan Trevize was nothing short of honour-bound to retrieve the medal as far as the Empire was concerned.

“So”, he crossed his arms, eyeing the stranger, “you’ve broken into my private communications to… mock me for my loss, is that it? Minmatar.” The last word he spat with nearly enough venom to match the shadowed man’s unhinging cadence. In reply, the mangled Wahpekute Assiniboine leaned closer.

“I am not here to mock you, esteemed Admiral.” Even in the eyes of a grizzled veteran of Trevize’s ilk, the former Inquisitor could read shock at the sight of his visage, grin like cracked plaster. “I rather thought you’d like to know where it is… where he is.”

“The medal. You know who has it?”

“Indeed I do…”

Golan’s eyes narrowed. This wasn’t the first such scam he had encountered, all of them coming from wretched Minmatar seeking to cash in on his misfortune by peddling him false information. Still, there was something about the intensity radiating from the stitch-ridden ghast’s piercing eyes that foreshadowed this was no ploy.

He frowned. “And what will this tip-off cost me? Do you perchance have relatives in my stables you’d like released? Yes, I’m sure that’s it.” The bitter taste of wine in his mouth was indistinguishable from the taste of being exploited by an ape.

“Common aims, my Admiral. Common aims, is all. You will likely find your trinket in the possession of a… businessman by the name of Istvaan Shogaatsu, taking residence in the Wirashoda system in a nightclub known as the Guiding Hand. You will also likely find the terrorist Hamish at his side. This knowledge I give you freely. In the interest of… justice.”

This was it. He didn’t bother with the courtesy of thanking the stranger, instead cutting the link off abruptly as he bolted to his feet. It was just the right combination of plausibility to act upon - a known criminal whose associations with the terrorists were stark contrast to the good name he had built for himself within the Amarr Empire, and third-party information given willingly. It was plain to see the massacred Minmatar he spoke to had his own angle, but that angle was hardly relevant. Now would come the vengeance, the calculated theatre of torment Trevize had envisioned for Hamish once he caught up with him. If the terrorist wanted the Mamet five hundred so badly, he would get to see them die, one by one, mewling in pain before his very eyes. For this reason alone, Trevize had reclaimed the slaves from his former corporation’s custody. Shogaatsu would pay with his life as well - no matter how deeply the criminal was connected or how many Amarr hands he had shaken, his recent sins against the empire made his killing all the more justified.

So much of his life had been thrown into chaos by this one event. After the Praetoria Imperialis Excubitoris command council elected not to release the livestock as ransom for the Sacred Throne Order cross, he abandoned them, seeking to slake his blood thirst by offering his considerable martial talents to an established mercenary joint, and returning only to claim the slaves. No matter how many died at his hands, however, the gnawing dishonour of being essentially mugged was ever-present in the Admiral’s thoughts - the constant harassment of daring Minmatar jockeys in rust-bucket frigates grazing the outer limits of his firing range, filling the local comms channel with jeers and derision, made sure he would never forget. Each taunt, each catcall hammered the need for retribution deeper into the very core of his being.

He hailed the bridge. “Make way to Wirashoda.”

Were the noise any louder, Istvaan imagined it would shake the station apart at the seams. The thick steel doors of the back room did little to dampen the eardrum-bursting assault of hard house and New Cal synchrocore emanating from the dance hall’s obscenely powerful speaker towers. Theme parties proved quite successful at attracting clientele from ever-farther reaches of New Eden - tonight was rave night, and the old man had noted the presence of the unlikeliest sort of partygoers in the crowd. A conservatively dressed Amarr gentleman stuck out most of all, dancing stiffly with an olive-skinned girl as though he had a broomstick wedged in his unmentionables; in the corner, a raucous mob of Serpentis smuggler-captains hailing from the savage Fountain region made sure to let the rest of the club know how much fun they were having. Flitting among the capacity crowd were his operatives and employees, dressed to the nines and dealing the finest brain candy the pirate smugglers could deliver. Tonight was going to be a fat wallet night, he realized, and pulled deeply on his trademark cigar.

A dancer took the stage, obviously comfortable with her nude, sweat-slicked body; her image blown up threefold in height and projected into the dance hall by the Guiding Hand’s advanced holographics. The old man couldn’t help but stare, still smiling lazily as he eyed the feed from the club’s interior cameras. Were the monitor beside it not flashing urgently, he would have been content to keep ogling, its call-chime drowned out entirely by the pounding bass from outside.

A familiar face - “Good evening, miss Constantine! What can I do you for?” he bellowed jovially, hoping the monitor’s receiver could pick up his voice over the din of the rave. He wondered what prompted the late-night communiqué.

Jade Constantine’s expression was too neutral to decipher. She forced a smile. “I have two pressing matters that require your attention, Mr. S. The first being your good friend,” - the smile became more wry - “the Sister Rolette en Bilal. I say Sister instead of Canoness because she got demoted quicker than a queer in the Caldari navy after we were through with her… the Sisterhood was quite upset, so much so that they granted us custody in light of the Jericho personnel she got killed.”

Istvaan nodded, hoping Constantine would not see the slight flush of red trespassing upon his face, or at least that she would attribute it to liquor, a glass of which he deftly scooped in hand. The mere fact that en Bilal still lived was an embarrassment, a nagging little failure on his part - he marked her for death, and still she lived. No matter.

“I’ll leave her in your capable hands, Jade. And the second matter?”

“The second matter… is, frankly, the real reason I’m contacting you.” The smile was gone now. He could read a hint of ire in the Gallente woman’s expression. “I’ll be blunt. I’m missing a pilot and I think you have him, knowing your… tendencies toward interrogation. He disappeared after our fracas in Wirashoda, that very day in fact. He’s a qualified pod captain and an asset to my organization. I want him back, and without pieces missing either.”

Now it was Istvaan’s turn to frown, his tongue suddenly loosened by a gulp of potent Amarr cognac. “Come the fuck on, my dear. Were I intent on kidnapping your pilots, you can bloody well bet I’d be rubbing proof of my capturing them in your face by now. Ask yourself, who was it that called the rescue shuttles to the field of battle after all was said and shot? Who was it that let you pick up your dead and wounded?”

Even though he meant what he stated, Istvaan took a small measure of pride that his aggressive confrontation worked - Constantine’s expression softened noticeably, and she leaned back from her end of the transmission. He smirked; there was only one way to deal with women. “You have my word, for what it’s worth, that I don’t have your captain.”

She eyed him, and he did not flinch. The living lie detector routine stretched on for an uncomfortable moment, until finally satisfied, Constantine nodded. “All right. I’ll take your word. Keep your many eyes and ears out for him though, won’t you? Can’t miss him, quite the monstrè, our chap. Tall and cut to ribbons, lots of scars. Probably Brutor, but then who knows these days. Went by his call sign, Thundercloud; he’ll likely be wearing our colors. Hell, you might even know him from back in the day.”

The old man filed Constantine’s words away in his mind, or more aptly, his intra-cranial mnemonic archive. When clouded with that finest of cognac, one’s mind could not rightly be counted upon to catalogue such curiosities. They parted conversation amiably, and his smiling eyes returned to the twenty-foot-tall hologram’s undulating midsection, head swimming in sweet tobacco smoke.



The next day


Hypnotized by windy ripples in a sea of grass stretching as far as the eye could see, Hamish Ramatakhlan stood from his high-backed chair to take in the vista. The humble perfection of the Minmatar homeworld gladdened his heart - the Hvítá, a shimmering azure artery that linked two of Pator’s great oceans, snaked off into the horizon far past the city limits, where it met the rising morning sun. He stood there for a moment, quietly taking in the sight from the window of his office.

He clenched and un-clenched his sore hand, and cast an equally sore glance at his desk - there lay the pen, still warm from his touch, with which he had slaved over a ream of paperwork as high as his knee for the past two hours. Were the obnoxious Joaquin Farrad available, Hamish would have relegated this drudgery to him in a heartbeat - instead, the task of signing every confounding insurance form and lease agreement in quadruplicate threatened to consume most of his waking day.

“So, Eagle Eye, how far through your pile did you get?” Ormazd’s grinning mug poked between a set of double doors toward the west wall of Hamish’s office.

Hamish winced miserably. “About a third of the way, you?”

“Two thirds. Then again, my pile’s smaller than yours, Mr. Chief Executive Officer, sir. Wow, first the suits, now paperwork, soon you’ll be flying some cubist abomination of a Caldari ship.” Ormazd chortled and slapped Hamish on the shoulder.

“And get a seizure from those damned blinking holiday lights they like to wrap their tubs in? No, thank you!”

Although it was a different star entirely, the morning sun was far less welcoming a greeting for the bleary-eyed Shogaatsu family - as Wirashoda station’s eastern portholes rotated around, it flooded the concourse with blinding golden light. The younger Shogaatsu squinted painfully, his pupils cartoonishly dilated by the tail end of a life-threatening cocktail of designer drugs. Istvaan merely tried to shield his eyes with his hand, suffering through his worst hangover in recent memory.

The walk from their estate to the Guiding Hand nightclub, while taxing on their party-weary eyes, was rewarding - here and there, a blissfully exhausted worker walking the other way would stop and shake their hand, or simply shriek their approval of the previous night’s raucous bacchanal from clear across the concourse.

They crossed through the doors of the club, the ever-present doormen nodding respectfully. The interior looked like a war zone. The floor was covered with a loathsome grey sludge; a mixture of spilled bottled water and drinks, sweat, nerve stick and cigar butts and god only knows what else - that inevitable by-product of an all-night rave party which often took its greatest toll on one’s best pants and shoes. Grim looking janitors laboured away, mopping the dreck and doing their best to return the Hand to a presentable state. The old man was strict about keeping the club spotless, and ensuring it was ready to entertain a new night’s worth of patrons.

A shrill scream and a sound comparable only to raw meat being deep-fried prompted both men to spin around on their heels. There was a commotion at the doorway they just crossed. Three deafening blasts from a doorman’s riot shotgun came one after another, and everyone in the Guiding Hand dove for cover; another death-scream echoed through the vaulted dance hall, again trailed by what Istvaan and Tetsuo realized to be the sound of loudly cooking human flesh.

A good ten strong they were, bursting through the door with such force that it nearly came off its hinges. Soldiers, clad in modern articulated ground combat armour, carrying long-muzzled heavy rifles the old man recognized almost immediately - man portable gamma ray lasers, a weapon he was unfortunately all too familiar with. A decade prior, using his Sabaoth Incorporated contacts, he had personally delivered their exact make and model to armed elements of the Sarum family. Apparently, the design had proliferated. The cruel weapons could well be used to hose a room indiscriminately with a continuous, invisible beam that seared and necrotized living tissue, and penetrated any cover the nightclub had to offer with laughable ease. In his mind, he wrote off the doormen for dead.

They were Amarr, their armour lending them the appearance of brass beetles. The Caldari quickly identified their leader, resplendent in a red-and-gold-rimmed robe draped over his pauldron and chest-piece. In seconds, the highly trained soldiers spread out and had weapons levelled at every Guiding Hand operative in the dance hall; even the terrified janitors and Shaheen the bar-girl were not spared attention. Shogaatsu quickly motioned for anyone loyal to him to stand down - the tense situation at hand could rapidly turn into a massacre.

“On your knees, all of you!” Roared the robed overlord, his soldiers already forcing everyone down. “Where is Shogaatsu? Istvaan Shogaatsu!”

The old man stayed down. His operatives were well trained, averting their sight from him in order to avoid identifying him as the ringleader. The janitors were a different story altogether, one even raising an accusing finger, pointing toward the unremarkable steel door where the old man and his brother dropped for cover. Unfortunately for the treacherous maintenance worker, the soldier guarding him - seemingly wired on some form of combat drug - mistook his nervous gesture for an attack, and cooked him on the spot. Tetsuo winced and looked away. He was certain he would hear the scream for days, assuming he lived that long.

“How the fuck did they get in system without being detected”, hissed Tetsuo.

The elder Shogaatsu took stock of the situation. Three of the soldiers were in classic ambush formation around the front doorway - anyone entering would be caught unaware by a death-blast from the dark. Two more were storming toward them, their thick metal boots clanging and crashing against the hardwood dance floor. The remaining four took to the corners of the club, ready to lay down a murderous crossfire in the event of melee breaking out - clearly, their combat armour was shielded against their own weapons, and Shogaatsu discounted a tentative mental plan to disarm one and claim his gun.

“Stand and identify yourself, Caldari dog, or I drench your house of sin in innocent blood!” The robed man’s grim ultimatum was muffled slightly by an ornate gold mask. To accentuate his point, he stormed toward the bar and seized Shaheen by the hair. She yelped in fright and pain - a freed slave, she was all too familiar with the brutality of Imperial troops.

“All right! All right. Let her go.” Uneasily, Istvaan stood to his feet. Tetsuo made to follow, but the old man quickly pushed him back down. The two soldiers nearest to him seized him brusquely by the shoulders, their heavy guns awkwardly aimed at him and his kneeling brother. The leader stomped forward, his boots making expensive indentations in the hardwood beneath them.

There was a long silence. Sizing up his prey, mused Istvaan as he tried to see through the darkly tinted eye-lenses of the armoured giant’s mask. Remembering the basics of dealing with Imperial officers, he quickly lowered his head in a tactful bow, yet never averting eye contact. Were it not made of solid immutable gold, the old man could swear the mask was smirking at him.

The leader slung his sidearm, and slowly detached the heavy mask from his chest-piece’s collar servos and breathing tubules. It fell to hang around his neck, visibly tugging at him with its weight. It took but a brief moment for Istvaan to process and identify the face behind the mask, and the urge to grin became nearly insurmountable. Everything was all right now.

“Esteemed Admiral Golan Trevize. Welcome to the Guiding Hand Social Club. All that is mine is now yours, and I throw myself upon your most benevolent mercy.” His voice took on the precise mixture of deference and defiance requisite to being held at gunpoint by a high-ranking Amarr used to getting what he wanted. This was worse than tap-dancing on razorblades.

In his armour, Trevize stood a head taller than Shogaatsu. A metal-clad gauntlet shot out from beneath his robe and seized the old man by the throat, just hard enough to mean business but not so forcefully that he could not breathe. To Golan, answers would come before vengeance.

Just then, the brushed steel doors behind them crashed open, and a nightmarish shadow moving faster than anything human had right to leapt upon the two soldiers restraining Istvaan. Inquisitor Heraeus Doradus, clearly not aware of Istvaan’s subtle and tacit stand-down order, had been in the Guiding Hand’s back room all this time. The club’s interior cameras alerted him to the commotion, and his superhuman senses betrayed the precise moment Golan Trevize had removed his protective mask. Now he was among them, like a scorpion among sluggish beetles.

A lightning fast open-hand strike crashed into the thick metal facemask of the soldier standing to Shogaatsu’s right, denting it deeply as though it were putty and sending a spatter of blood out behind it. The inhuman power of the Inquisitor sent the soldier flying halfway across the room, his skull crushed and his strand of fate severed before he hit the ground. Doradus quickly leapt aside, his chief concern now to prevent Shogaatsu from being caught in a crossfire, and seized the other soldier by the arm and throat, fingers digging clean through his articulated metal neck guard. He dragged the gurgling goliath behind the bar. Graser shots rang out, the mahogany of the bar scorching black where-ever they struck, but the Inquisitor was simply too quick - deftly spinning the helpless and dying soldier to face his comrades, and using him as an impervious human shield to intercept the searing bolts of radiation; bolts which he could see clear as day by means of his wide-spectrum sense of vision. In an instant, the snared soldier’s hefty graser was levelled at Golan Trevize’s exposed face, Doradus’ freakishly long arm seemingly coiled all the way around the soldier’s, and his finger already on the trigger.

Trevize froze. Removing his mask was a mistake. The inch of solid gold served to protect him at least partially from an errant friendly-fire graser discharge, something he knew his soldiers were trained to avoid when using their weapons. Now such a weapon was inches away from his genuinely surprised face - and, for a weapon that weighed enough to be a burden, being held in the monstrous assailant’s one extended arm, it wasn’t shaking or faltering one bit. The simple assault he had planned on had erupted into a tense standoff.

The Inquisitor spoke, his ghoulish eyes filled with mischief. “Move. Blink. Breathe. Please give me a reason.” Like a nest of fucking snakes, thought Trevize, unsettled in such fashion for the second time in two days.

Istvaan Shogaatsu was now firmly in control of the situation - until he spoke, causing all operatives still on their knees to cast concerned glances in his direction, believing him utterly insane.

“Inquisitor Doradus. Levelling arms against a guest of my house is un-civilized. You should know better. Stand down, immediately.” Doradus’ eyes darted to Istvaan’s, uncertain for only a split second until he saw the old man’s sly expression. The two had been loyal companions for years; they could read each other like open books.

As Doradus lowered his appropriated weapon, every one of Trevize’s soldiers shouldered theirs, preparing to open fire. Tetsuo closed his eyes, hoping the sizzling and the burning wouldn’t last too long before he woke up in Uchoshi with a mouth full of clone piss. To everyone’s surprise, it was Golan Trevize who stayed the guards’ attack with a dismissive wave of his armoured fist.

The gagging soldier crashed to the ground behind the bar as Doradus released his serpentine grip. Trevize took a reserved step toward Istvaan. His golden hand was now extended.

“It is a rare mercy to hold another’s life in your hand, and let it free. When I came here, I had no plan on affording you such mercy. Your name is known in the Empire, and I see now that it is so for good reason.”

Who says I’ve let it free, thought the Caldari bemusedly but masking that mirth perfectly, fully aware of Doradus’ reaction time. Were it necessary, the Inquisitor would have bashed that un-slung rifle through the Admiral’s skull before he could have blinked. He took the Admiral’s extended hand and shook it, noting the large gold ring fitting snugly over the Amarr’s armoured gauntlet. It struck him that he had seen the ring before: lying on Trevize’s bedchamber nightstand. It had caught his eye when Istvaan, clad in stealth-suit and accompanied by Guiding Hand covert ops specialist Savisaalo, infiltrated Trevize’s estates intent on pilfering the Cross. Its peculiar size struck him that day, appearing entirely too large for a human finger. It dawned on the old man that it was crafted to fit over Amarr tactical armour - now he really couldn’t help but smile.

“My name is a candlelight compared to the red giant Golan Trevize. I am honoured to host you, for word of the feats of Praetoria Imperialis Excubitoris’ great commander spread far beyond the Empire.” The language was flowery and formal. Speaking in common tongue would be perceived as an affront. Shogaatsu knew full well of Trevize’s departure from PIE, the capsuleer community’s foremost Imperial representatives - his mention of them was a carefully crafted verbal jab meant to put the Admiral on the defensive.

“I no longer command the Praetoria.” Checkmate. “I am here on a personal matter of honour.”

“Then, as we are both honourable men, should we not speak in private without the encumbrance of brandished weapons?” The Caldari put on his best disarming smile, the tension visibly draining from the Admiral’s expression. “I have a bottle of forty-two vintage Amarr cognac just begging to be tasted.”

Grudgingly, the Admiral relented, his soldiers gathering around him. He pointed them to the wheezing trooper behind the bar, and two broke off to tend to the wounded man. A collective sigh of relief was heard through the nightclub as Istvaan’s operatives finally stood to their feet.

Two of his soldiers behind him, Golan Trevize followed Istvaan into the Guiding Hand’s back room, bowing his head slightly to avoid hitting the doorframe. They sat at the round table, chairs creaking dangerously under the awesome mass of Golan’s battle carapace.

Golan spoke. “I am here because of -“

“Ah-ah-ah, first we drink as friends.” Istvaan interrupted, becoming more daring. “I do not intend to let us part company on bad terms, Admiral. You know what these are? The finest of Bersyrim grapes, harvested in the dog days of Odra’s summer, aged and flavoured to perfection in butter-wood barrels.” Already, the amber liquid flowed from an uncorked bottle into the glass closest to Trevize. For the first time since the Admiral barged into the Guiding Hand, the slightest hint of a grin crossed his face.

Wordlessly, he held his gauntlet up to the soldier standing guard to his side. The soldier bowed deeply, and set to the confounding task of removing the golden gauntlet, carefully undoing each clasp, piston and buckle so that the Admiral could pick up the delicate glass without crushing it. Never abandoning his formalities, he first inhaled the drink’s potent fragrance; he then took a taste, the possibility of poison no doubt present at the back of his still adrenaline-flooded mind.

Trevize closed his eyes. His guard tensed, no doubt suspecting the same.

“Incredible. The last time I tasted something of this refinement was at the ceremony when I was awarded the Cross of the Sacred Throne Order. It came from the private casks of the Chamberlain himself.” Trevize was about to set the glass down, when the flawless aroma seduced him and he took another, less timid swig. His eyes glazed over ever so slightly, as though he were recalling a brighter past. This did not last.

“Which brings us to why I have come to you in so violent a fashion. The medal was taken from me. That you know of this I have no doubt, but whether you had something to do with it, is yet to be determined. A source I have reason to believe informs me the medal is in your possession, or in the possession of known Minmatar filth you affiliate… no, soil yourself with.”

“I promise you, Admiral, I do not”, assured Istvaan, lying through his teeth. “I will not interfere should you wish to have your men search my establishment, or even my private estates, to verify this for yourself - though, I should warn your men to be mindful of the Slaver hounds in my personal residence. They are quite territorial.”

Trevize’s eyebrows shot up like Venetian blinds. “Slaver hounds?”

Jackpot, thought Istvaan, taking satisfaction in the Admiral’s reaction. During his time in the Amarr Empire, performing various services for the Sarum royal family, he came to learn the art of high discourse. It was a style of conversation designed to confound and exclude the lower castes with its unspoken rules and intricacies. Speaking to an Amarr of refinement, a Holder doubly so, was nothing short of a fencing match - one feinted, dodged, pierced and probed for weaknesses, all the while maintaining the utmost of decorum. Throw enough cultural references at them and you’re bound to score, he mused.

“Oh yes”, the Caldari continued. “Have you heard of the ‘Dominus Bestiary and Kennels’? Agil system, the station orbiting the sixth world?” He stood from his chair, and walked to a corner desk. There lay a studded collar, which he took in hand, his face suddenly painted by a mix of fondness and quiet sorrow.

“Yes, I believe I have - one of our more respected kennels. Why, I believe the new guard Slavers that patrol my private estates come from there. I had the old ones put down for their failure preventing the medal’s theft, but the new litter are splendid animals.” Trevize eyed the collar in Istvaan’s hand. “Don’t tell me you ordered your beast there as well!”

“Actually, I’ll do you one better”, he stated, smugly sliding his deceased hound’s collar over to the Admiral. “Read the tag.”

Trevize squinted, the potent liquor clearly taking an effect on his ability to read small print.

“Dom… Dominus? No! You?”

“I’m afraid so. You’re looking at the proprietor of those kennels. Wonderfully savage things, aren’t they? I can’t even recall when precisely I fell in love with breeding Slavers, but I dare say I’ve become adept at it.” He raised his glass, which Trevize eagerly met. Remarkable, he thought - not a half hour prior, this man would have killed him where he stood. Istvaan’s respect for all things Amarr had served him yet again.

Seeking to appear helpful rather than complicit, he hazarded returning to the subject at hand. “Now, about that medal. You are of course aware of my… connections, to certain less than savoury elements within the Republic and otherwise. I understand that these affiliations make me appear like less of a just man in your eyes, but perhaps you will grant me the opportunity to redeem myself. The terrorist Hamish - I can give him to you.”

Golan sat back. This felt familiar. Time to go on the offensive and see where this Caldari’s loyalties truly dwelled.

“Superb!” he roared, draining the cognac in one violent swig and slamming the glass down. As Istvaan helpfully obliged him to another drink, he elaborated on his theatrical revenge plot, probing the old man. “When I track that maggot-worm down, his last days will be filled with the screams of the Mamet five-hundred, dying one by one!”

A Minmatar loyalist would never abide such brutality, mused Golan.

“These… Mamet five-hundred, are they well trained?”, queried Istvaan in monotone, in fact genuinely interested and seeing an unique opportunity land in his lap.

Golan’s voice took on a boastful tone. “They are educated in mathematics, poetry… song, dance, even pleasure for the wicked among us.” It would be a shame wasting such good cattle, he admitted to himself.

“What about engineering?”

“A good three hundred of them are qualified to serve aboard a ship of the line. The others can act as maintenance staff, if so ordered. Why do you ask these things?”

“My command battleship was involved in an engagement. Took a hit to the tertiary reactor chamber. I’m direly short on able-bodied slave engineers. Think I could convince you to allow me to purchase the slaves best qualified for service aboard an Apocalypse class? I certainly won’t deny you your vengeance; you can slaughter the rest as you see fit.”

“Then… you abide slavery?” The Venetian blinds climbed higher.

“But of course. The strong should dominate the weak.”

That did the trick, thought Istvaan - Trevize was at least slightly impressed. The Caldari continued, attempting to press his newfound advantage. “How would you like a tour of a slice of the Empire’s history?”

“The slaves are yours to purchase at established SPCS prices.” Golan finished his second glass. “However, reclaiming what is mine will have to take priority over further pleasantries.” Damn, thought Istvaan. Touring the Chorus of Angels would have to wait for their next meeting.

“My operatives have tracked the terrorist Hamish to Pator, the capital city. He occupies the executive offices of the most prominent tower in the capital, the Tribal Trust of Pator spire. He is not under guard, and resistance should be minimal. You’ll find the medal there, most likely. If not, return here and I will help you find it.”

Trevize stood to his feet, and grasped Shogaatsu’s arm with his un-gloved hand.

“You have made a friend today.”

He tried to pull away, but Shogaatsu would not relinquish his grip just yet. “Before you go, esteemed Admiral, one last question if I may… who led you here?”

“A Minmatar, scarred and most offensive in visage. He claimed to have common interests with me in seeing you slain”, Golan replied matter-of-factly. Upon hearing this, the old man smiled broadly, finally putting two and two together with a little help from his memory implant.

The armoured Admiral again donned his gauntlet and mask, and unsteadily made for the door, his soldiers forming up behind him, weapons still cautiously shouldered, their crashing footfalls fading into the distance. Two carried an injured comrade on a field-deployable stretcher; another dragged the one slain soldier’s carcass by the collar of his chest-piece. As quickly as they came, they were gone. Shogaatsu emerged from the back room, appearing utterly spent. He exhaled for the first time in an eternity and sorely eyed the dents, scuffs and skid of crimson blood defacing the dance hall’s hardwood floor.

Tetsuo Shogaatsu sidled over to him. “Want me to clean up?” He was of course referring to the dead doormen and janitor still scattered about near the entrance, flesh scorched black like coal.

Istvaan nodded. “Send the families of the doormen a good condolence payment, they did their jobs well enough. Not the cleaner, just dump his carcass into an ore furnace. If anyone asks where he went, tell them he met the true love of his life and eloped.” The old man never failed to hold a grudge.

“Should we have done that?”

“Done what?”

“Sold the monkey out.”

Istvaan eyed his brother. “Consider the alternative. Not everyone here has access to backup clones, but thanks to us, Hamish does. As far as cost versus profit goes, we came out of this winners: I got crew for the Chorus, we met a potential ally crucial to re-establishing links within the Empire, and when Mr. Ramatakhlan wakes up in his new body, his wallet should be overflowing with insurance funds from the damage Trevize’s goons are bound to wreak. What could go wrong?”



Yesterday


“The hell was that?”

The dull blast rattled the Tribal Trust of Pator tower from apex to base, startling Ormazd and Hamish. Three floors above them, an Amarr landing craft had disgorged a phalanx of brass-armoured goliaths onto the roof. The soldiers had breached the building in the most efficient manner available - a satchel charge.

Another blast came soon after. Whoever was invading the building seemed bent on taking the direct route: straight through floor after floor. Still carrying their Republic Navy issue side arms, the two Minmatar immediately fell back upon their training. There was no security personnel in the tower that could repel an attack the likes of which was heading straight for them.

”Surrender, Hamish! I have you now!”

The voice that echoed down the Tribal Trust of Pator tower’s central hallway chilled Hamish. He knew that voice well enough to know he was neck deep in shit. “Call the Republic and local law, tell them we’ve got Amarr soldiers on Matari soil!”

As Ormazd ran to a desktop terminal, Hamish proceeded to clear two heavy wooden tables of papers, and force them through his office door, forming an impromptu defilade. Their footsteps, clanging and heavy, were clearly audible as the soldiers approached from a side corridor.

“They’re armoured!” He hollered to Ormazd, who burst from the door and joined Hamish, his pistol quickly steadied against the overturned document table. The two comrades were dug in now; ready to face whatever would burst from that corridor. Save for, perhaps, a flash grenade.

The burst caught both men unawares, and blinded them completely, Ormazd ducking behind a table, and Hamish rolling back into his office through the open door.

“I’ll hold them off as long as I can, Eagle-Eye!”

Wild, uncontrolled bursts of pistol fire rang out from behind the door. Ormazd was clearly firing blind. The clink-clank of spent brass hitting faux-marble floor came soon after. Hamish frantically rubbed his eyes, his sight returning slowly but still feeling as though he had stared at the sun too long. The grunts and orders in Amarish were getting closer now, and Hamish thought he heard the clatter of an armoured body falling dead to the ground.

One down, god knows how many to go.

As he could finally tell objects apart from one another, Hamish crept closer to the crack between the doors, when he heard a sound not unlike raw meat being deep-fried. The chattering report of Ormazd’s sidearm went silent, and the wood of the door directly behind the spot where Hamish last saw his friend taking cover had been scorched charcoal black.

“Oh shit. Ormazd! They have grasers!” he screamed through the crack, but there was no reply. Hamish went pale in the face. He cursed whatever madman sold the Amarr those wretched weapons.

His office had only one entrance, and this was it. He was bottled in, and the footfalls of the invaders were right outside his door. He could hear sirens drawing closer from street level as well, and briefly toyed with the possibility of holding them off until the Republic authorities arrived to deal with them - by his count, there were at least six. And those damned grasers…

Street level.

That thought kept recycling itself in his head, like a data-cassette stuck on loop. He turned uncertainly to the sweeping windows behind his desk. There was a park down there somewhere, and Hamish struggled to recall whether it faced the east or the north wall of the tower. The right choice meant a lot of broken bones if he were lucky enough to land in a tree. Choosing wrong would give Pator City’s more art-inclined commuters an interesting abstract painting on the pavement to comment upon. He closed his eyes and ran, firing wildly behind him at the scorched wooden door.

The crash of breaking glass came almost simultaneously with Golan Trevize himself bursting through the door, his own pulse pistol held at the ready and soldiers pouring in behind him. He caught the sight of the Minmatar plunging from the window, and ran to it just as his tiny, distant form disappeared into a bushy tiracac tree.

“We have to go after him and make sure he’s dead!” roared Trevize.

“Sir! With respect, we’ll be torn limb from limb by the locals. Nobody could have survived that fall.” The soldier to the Admiral’s right knew that challenging his order would likely mean corporal punishment, when his eye came to rest on what would be his salvation. “Besides… we have what we came for!”

Trevize spun on his heel so quickly it gouged a spiral wound in the marble floor beneath him. There, in its black velvet mounting frame, laid the Cross of the Sacred Throne Order. He gestured to another soldier, who produced a matching velvet box from his gear bag. The frame fit in the box flawlessly, and Golan found himself suddenly overcome with joy.

“Back to the ship, quickly!”

Lying a thousand storeys below, the broken Hamish could only look upward as a tiny point of light detached from the peak of the TTP spire, and soared into the heavens. His body shattered and his mind fading quickly, he imagined the Amarr shuttle to be Ormazd’s spirit freed from its mortal coil. He lost consciousness soon after, not even realizing that he was surrounded by startled passer-by and approaching emergency personnel. He could feel the warm park grass underneath him, even as he dreamed.

He did not regain consciousness in the ambulance, or for hours afterward. His splintered bones were mended by ossoregenerators, his body scanned for internal injuries and any present mended. A hospital aide stood over him, busying herself with a tunnelling neural pathway scanner in one hand and, in a nod to Minmatar medicine’s tribal roots, a spirit-rattle in the other. In his dreams, he fought a giant serpent.

“Doctor”, shouted the aide, spotting something decidedly inconsistent with Hamish Ramatakhlan’s Republic Navy medical record. “Could you come over here? I found something on the neural scan, but I can’t figure out what it’s for. Appears to be some kind of… custom implant job.”

“Then perhaps our patient can tell us what it does when he regains consciousness. Shouldn’t be much longer now. If not, we’ll call a specialist, implants always did fascinate me to no end.”

The old man, Tetsuo, the Inquisitor Doradus and sundry operatives had gathered in the Guiding Hand Social Club’s back room, drinks and cigars in hand. The meeting was supposed to be urgent. Once everyone had gathered, Shogaatsu stood up, holding his Slaver's collar.

“Inquisitor Doradus. What do you remember about Wahpekute Assiniboine?”