Assassinorum kingmaker, p.10
Assassinorum Kingmaker, page 10
FOURTEEN
>>Interrogation Transcript 6
>>Operation: Kingmaker
>>File No. 5782-Gamma-KMKR
>>Mission Day: 11
>>Recording Device: Ear canal augmetics [stereo]
>>Recorder: Avaaris Koln
>>Cleared for Reading: Koln, Avaaris; Raithe, Absolom; Sycorax [LIST ENDS]
>>Clearance Level: Vermilion Special Privileged
>>DO NOT TRANSMIT<<
>>DO NOT DUPLICATE<<
>>PURGE DATA ON MISSION COMMENCEMENT<<
[Transcript begins at 1:12:35 of recording]
KOLN: So let’s take two steps back.
RAKKAN: Very well.
KOLN: For completeness, I’m going to review the Dominion succession process.
RAKKAN: We’ve been through it in detail for days…
KOLN: Humour me. I want to create a brief record for my associates.
RAKKAN: If you wish.
KOLN: To succeed to the planetary throne, and pilot the Knight Castellan Crown of Dominion, a candidate must be of a specific parentage. Namely, they must be born to one parent from House Stryder, and one parent from House Rau.
RAKKAN: That’s correct. It is impossible to succeed to the throne without direct parentage from both houses. It was originally a measure to prevent civil war – not that it has.
KOLN: These children then form a line of succession depending on the status of their ancestry, their genealogies going back to the original settlement ships.
RAKKAN: Yes, we call it the Lists. Though not all marriages are within the two houses or between the two. Members of Stryder or Rau will on occasion marry outside. It degrades the succession placement of any descendants in that line for a generation or two, of course, but it also enriches the genetic pool by introducing new blood – all the lines have married outside, strategically, at one time or another. A few internal marriages usually recover some status, as the outside marriage passes into history.
KOLN: And where were you in the succession line?
RAKKAN: It’s hard to say, really. Far down. All successors have a worth – a points score, to put it crudely. Your starting worth and placement in the Lists is based on your genealogy, which affects what kind of Knight you inherit. My initial worth was fifty, since my grandfather was an outside marriage and even before then, the Fang line was never worth much. We’ve ridden Jester for Emperor knows how long. Ten millennia, if you believe the chronicles. Most start out with one hundred, or a hundred and fifty – those families have Questoris-pattern Knights. The best bloodlines might have an initial worth of two hundred… though by that time, a line is generally so inbred as to be unable to pilot a Knight.
KOLN: And whoever has the highest worth ascends the throne?
RAKKAN: No, no. [laughs] That would be too easy. Worth is really only there to demonstrate suitability. When the High Monarch dies, the court convenes in a conclave to elect the new monarch – each casting a single vote. There’s… bargaining. Land swaps. Undermining. Often the candidate with the highest worth doesn’t get chosen – but only once in history has a candidate not in the top seven places in the Lists been chosen.
KOLN: So you could ascend the throne.
RAKKAN: That would assume the system is fair. It isn’t. Yes, worth can be accumulated, my score could go up. But it’s via tournament victories, or success in war – an Armiger will never do as well as a Knight Paladin, for instance, in either field. Really, my numbers can only go down.
KOLN: How?
RAKKAN: If you marry or sire a child as a candidate, you lose all worth and are out of the line. If I married, I’d join my partner’s house.
KOLN: Explain that, please.
RAKKAN: The whole point is that the candidates have no formal allegiance. They’re between houses from birth. Growing up, we spend a year in our father’s house, then a year in our mother’s, alternating until we reach our majority. Usually as we do that, each house tries to sway us one way or another in our sympathies. Each house hopes that should one of us reach the throne, that candidate will secretly favour them. You have to understand – apart from my parents’ wedding day, they had no contact.
KOLN: So how were you…
RAKKAN: An artificial womb, implanted with my mother and father’s genetic material. They started that three centuries ago. There were too many… emotional attachments forming in political marriages. The houses didn’t like it. Things got messy. It divided loyalties. Spouses caring more about each other than the good of the house. There were a few double-suicides when they tried to break couples up. So now the marriages are only contractual, for the purposes of producing a single child.
KOLN: Sounds a difficult way to grow up.
RAKKAN: I’ve come to realise it was… unusual.
KOLN: And the Armiger? It seems unusual, as you put it, to mount a possible future monarch in a vehicle for a bondsman.
[Pause: 2 seconds]
RAKKAN: When I became of age to become a pilot, my worth was not large enough to rate one of the more sacred machines. Outside marriage in my father’s line. And Jester was his Knight. The court thought that was proper.
KOLN: So if you were so low in the succession order… your great-uncle, Yavarius-Khau. Why would he try to have you killed?
RAKKAN: I don’t know. Perhaps because I’d bested one of his favourites in the summer tournament. Or he worried my mother’s line was getting too powerful. Who knows? The man is senile and insane.
Hot in the forgeshrine. Hot like the steam vents near Rau Manor. Hot like sweaty sheets.
Gwynne, jumping for him. The impact. A bone-white hand holding the laspistol.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Rakkan sat up, shouting. Scrambled to rise and could not.
Hot. So hot. The sheets pressing down on him, damp and warm like the air of the forgeshrine. He threw off the blankets, gaining mastery over himself. Fought the panic that he couldn’t take his feet.
He put his face in his hands. Controlled his breath.
It had been a long time since the dream.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Not the splitting crack of a laspistol. A fist on his door.
Not unable to rise, just injured, the nerves of his spine severed by the assassin’s second shot.
He reached down and activated his leg armature, swung his feet over the bunk and stood. The lock on the door cycled – he did not have control over that – but they preserved his dignity by letting him open the door himself.
Outside stood Avaaris Koln, her tall, broad-shouldered frame swathed in a blue Navy coat. And behind her was a small woman with fine features, offset by a cruel mouth. She wore a deep cloak and hood.
‘Good morrow, ladies.’
‘Good morrow, Sir Rakkan,’ said Koln. ‘I wanted to introduce you to the person who will be impersonating you upon our return to Dominion – you remember we discussed that.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, of course. Please take me to him.’
No one moved. The woman gave a rasping laugh.
‘This is her,’ said Koln.
‘But… she…’ said Rakkan. His brow knit. He seemed to be searching for the correct response. Trying to discern whether this was a joke at his expense. ‘But she looks nothing like me.’
‘Everyone always thinks they’re one of a kind, so unique and irreplaceable, but…’ said the cruel-mouthed woman, her voice shifting as she lowered her head into the cowl. ‘The truth is that everyone can be replaced, sir Knight. Everyone.’
Rakkan had to grip the door to keep from falling – because the voice coming from the woman’s lips had become light but masculine.
And when the cowled head rose, he saw the face looking back at him was his own.
FIFTEEN
>>Interrogation Transcript 8
>>Operation: Kingmaker
>>File No. 5782-Gamma-KMKR
>>Mission Day: 12
>>Recording Device: Ear canal augmetics [stereo]
>>Recorder: Avaaris Koln
>>Cleared for Reading: Koln, Avaaris; Raithe, Absolom; Sycorax [LIST ENDS]
>>Clearance Level: Vermilion Special Privileged
>>DO NOT TRANSMIT<<
>>DO NOT DUPLICATE<<
>>PURGE DATA ON MISSION COMMENCEMENT<<
[Transcript begins at 1:01, interview preparations excised]
KOLN: Do you mind if we conduct this interview in Low Gothic rather than binharic?
GWYNNE: You know binharic?
KOLN: Yes, though with a pronounced Ryzan accent.
GWYNNE: You’ve been to Ryza?
KOLN: I have not been, no, but I was trained by a Ryzan of the Sacred Archive.
GWYNNE: Marvellous. You have my envy, freely given. Also for the sensor suite installed in the ceiling. I presume you’re scanning my chain of thought?
KOLN: You presume correctly.
GWYNNE: Most intriguing. This is an excellent ship. It doesn’t look like much at a glance, but scan beneath the internal hull panels and there’s all sorts of…
KOLN: You’re quite a curious little thing, aren’t you?
GWYNNE: Yes, everyone says so. I’m sorry. [subaudible buzzing]
KOLN: What is that?
GWYNNE: The Catechism of Admonishment. My masters taught it to me as a self-correction measure whenever I… well. It feels like whenever I do anything, but particularly when I start asking questions. We’re not supposed to do that.
KOLN: Ask questions?
GWYNNE: Yes. Or wonder about things. A sacristan is not a tech-priest, you see, not really. We are not delvers and researchers. Our path is to maintain. Maintain the noble Knights we serve, repair their damage, ensure their human component is kept safe.
KOLN: Human component, you mean the pilot?
GWYNNE: The pilot, yes.
KOLN: So you know everything about how Jester works.
GWYNNE: [laughs] You are funny. We’re not meant to know how the Knights work, it is a consecrated mystery not for mortals like us. I can repair the sacred Knight Jester, ensure it runs smoothly, but I am not to investigate its workings. To do so would be a most terrible insult to the ancient creators, and a violation of the ancestors contained within.
KOLN: So you’re not curious.
GWYNNE: However could I not be curious? A divine machine like Jester, made by the Omnissiah and maintained by thousands of the Machine God’s servants… But temptation to delve is not the same as delving. Yet that mere inquisitiveness was enough to receive reprimands from Arch-Maintenancer Tessell. I do not remember much before the damage to my mem-banks, but I do remember her saying that I was always sticking my diagnostic sensor where it didn’t belong. In addition, my comportment is lacking, my tone far too light, and altogether…
KOLN: Too much of everything.
GWYNNE: My masters thought so. But Jester seemed to like me.
KOLN: That is lucky. Because right now I’d rather have a bad sacristan than a good one.
GWYNNE: Whatever for? Against all training, I’m intrigued.
KOLN: Tell me about the sacristan order on Dominion.
GWYNNE: There is not much to tell. We serve the Knights.
KOLN: The machines, or the human component?
GWYNNE: The blessed machines, of course. Human components wear out or break and get replaced, their spirits subsumed into the throne or helm, but the Knights are eternal. Jester itself has existed since settlement, and was activated and took its first steps ten thousand years ago.
KOLN: Are you allied to a specific house?
GWYNNE: The houses are nothing to us. We serve the machines. Should a machine’s human component go on to their afterlife within the soul chamber, and a human component from a new house take over, we travel with them. It is not the so-called pilot we are loyal to, it is the Knight. Indeed, my order are the only impartial force on Dominion. It is often the Arch-Maintenancer’s swing vote that decides the next monarch. And we have prevented civil war on numerous occasions.
KOLN: Is that so?
GWYNNE: Yes, we don’t want the Knights to get hurt. Not over human pride. We are their custodians. Should one die, it should die fighting the Archenemy. A worthy death for a great machine.
KOLN: So if my goal was to prevent such a civil war, you would work with me?
GWYNNE: Of course. It would be my duty.
KOLN: Even if it meant killing High Monarch Yavarius-Khau.
GWYNNE: Don’t be morbid. You can’t kill Yavarius-Khau. His soul will simply live eternally with his ancestors within the Crown of Dominion. But you shouldn’t anyway.
KOLN: Why not?
GWYNNE: Because it isn’t how things are done. We will wait until he dies and use due process to choose the human component to replace him.
KOLN: From what I have learned, the High Monarch is senile and mad. Mentally damaged. And if you have a damaged component, isn’t it better to replace it early before it causes a total breakdown? It’s the same as you’d do for a capacitor or join servo.
[Pause: 2 seconds]
GWYNNE: Yes, that is logical.
KOLN: Would you have any qualms?
GWYNNE: You’re monitoring my thought-chain traffic. Do you see any?
KOLN: No, I think we understand each other.
GWYNNE: I think we do.
‘This is what confuses me,’ said Sycorax.
She tapped her finger on the manual’s schematics, open to a hand-drawn layout of the Armiger’s controls that matched the instrument console in front of her. It folded out of the larger manuscript like a map. Unfurled, it was half of life-size, covering her entire lap and flowing onto the arms of the command chair.
She had no idea where Koln had obtained the manual. But by the spidery calligraphic writing, she suspected the Vanus had written it herself by hand.
‘Well, that,’ Rakkan said, ‘that’s the most important part.’
‘That explains everything, then.’ To Sycorax’s left and right, the walls – padded with leather to protect her skull in case a solid hit rattled her cranium against the bulkhead – pressed in on her, claustrophobic. Above, Rakkan hung over her like a gargoyle, his torso leaning into the top of the open hatch. She could smell his cologne, a salt tang she assumed was a specialty of his home world.
They had spent a week together, now. Discussing the structures of Stryder-Rau. His family. Cousins’ names, and what they liked to eat. Endless questions like: When a conversation has become tense at a party, what do you say to dispel it? What are the sensitivities around money? If you bump or jostle a person of lower rank, do you apologise to them, or them to you?
Sycorax knew the way she looked at him made him uncomfortable. And she tried to accommodate that – but study was study.
‘Apologies, lady, that was obtuse. You are only seeing half the mechanisms. This panel’ – he leaned in far over her shoulder to trace the bottom panel – ‘constitutes the physical instruments, which are manual controls. Among them are our dials and switches. The throttle lever for your right hand, fire-control stick for your left. Chain-cleaver stick just ahead and to the right of the throttle. If you’re ever rendered thought-dead – if your connection to the Helm Mechanicum is cut – you can rely on these. You will be slow and stilted. More like a Militarum walker than a fusion of human consciousness and archeotech, but it might be enough to keep you alive.’
Rakkan’s words grew less stilted as he spoke, not quite natural but faster.
‘This part.’ Rakkan indicated the top of the sheet. ‘These are your cerebro-spinal impulsion instruments. Not so much literal controls but thought-patterns.’
‘I thought that once I was plugged into the Helm Mechanicum, the Knight would do what I do.’ She looked up over her shoulder, and she saw Rakkan’s eyes flick away from hers.
‘Not exactly. With practice, it feels like that.’ Rakkan fixed his eyes on the curve of the Armiger’s hull. He began rubbing it as if to buff out a scratch. ‘But in the beginning it’s unnatural. Like controlling a new augmetic. An Armiger doesn’t move like a human body does. Not only do you have to separate your thought-stream to compel the Armiger’s movements and actions, while still commanding your own body to work physical controls when needed, you also have to merge your consciousness with the machine to an extent. Mingle it with the previous pilots. Become both someone, and something, else.’
‘I’ve never had trouble becoming someone else.’
‘There is no hiding from them. They may sense the difference in your blood and reject you. It would be entirely impossible with a larger Knight – the Becoming ritual cannot be replicated with a stand-in. Even now, I worry it is not possible. Even with you… changed…’
She folded the control schematic and closed the manuscript. ‘All right, Rakkan. Out with it.’
‘Out with what?’
She reached up for the hoist handles and pulled herself upward, one toe pushing off the back of the chair to give her leverage. In a moment, she sat on the hump of the Armiger’s back, her legs dangling into the cockpit. ‘You’re tense. Muscles tightened. Breathing accelerated. My guess is that you’re grinding your teeth at night. Over the last two days, I can practically smell the anxiety coming off you. I’d hoped you would relax, and I’ve done everything I could to make this easier, but it’s not helping.’
He stood back on his augmetic braces, mouth open.
‘We only have a week left,’ she said. ‘And if at the end of it, I can’t pass for you or pilot this Knight’ – she rapped on the armour – ‘we’re all going to be dead. So what’s your problem with me?’
‘I… I suppose it’s questions more than anything.’
‘Ask away. If there’s an answer, I’ll give it.’
Rakkan chewed the inside of his cheek. Sycorax stared at the movement, studying it. He didn’t so much knead the cheek between his teeth as most might. He bit down and held it, pinched, between his molars. ‘I suppose it’s… You’re a strange one, but you’re the most normal of them. That man Raithe feels like he’s almost as much a machine as Gwynne. Avaaris seems personable enough until she opens her mouth, but it’s not natural, the way she thinks. But with you, I can’t pin it down. I keep thinking that the person I’m talking to might be as much of a construction, as much of a disguise, as when you assumed my shape.’
