Jackson stood in the mess onboard the Death’s Silence, underneath the new standard of the Inquisition of Mind-readers. He had had corporal One-hand fabricate it quickly upon their arrival. It was simple in design, a stylised black dragon against a white field, the black shimmered to gold in direct light, and it was held at the top to a cross-member attached to the pole behind him. A new company required a new standard.
He looked around at the organised chaos around him; it was unnerving to see an alien race roaming the corridors and halls of what was clearly a draconic life-vessel. It was only meant for private use, sure, so there wasn’t a city attached to it, but one large dragon and his attendants still took much space when all amenities were considered, and here in the Empire of Celestial Skies amenities were considered. There were five squads of imperial marines, each with their own engineer they were escorting around. The ship would be perfectly safe, with the potential exception of some sub-programming in the ship computer.
For that reason Jackson kept his peace, he wasn’t going to promise something to these humans without being able to deliver. He was, after all, still an unknown to them and he needed to be an authority, honest and certain in their minds. He would be incredibly intentional with his image until such time as he had momentum behind him. He was building a Hold from scratch. It would take much care and tending to grow it from what it was into what it would be. Care and time. He had both to spare, for no other duties were his. That sent a twinge of uncertainty down his spine. I’m not sure if I’m overstepping here. Lord Rieven told me to run with my responsibilities, but I’m not sure where the boundaries are. I can just keep going as I see best until he informs me I’ve crossed a line. He’s unlikely to slay me in a fit of pique, and he certainly isn’t Heat Death. I should be fine.
He looked over to corporal One-hand. She was standing with her marine squad, looking very uncomfortable with her lot in life. He hissed low in amusement. She had clearly been avoiding command, and now it was here. She would do well, for she bore the Sword of Consequence. So long as she was permitted that blade, she would be intrinsically connected to the Black Drake Hold. She had no idea what that blade meant for her. He made a note in his new datapad to begin training her in the draconic forms. It would be important for her to know the tradition she was carrying on, nor would it do for her to be unfamiliar in the use of the weapon. He saw she used hand axes in close combat. A sword was vastly dissimilar to a hand axe. She would learn, and she would learn well. She was versed in human subtlety, swordsmanship was not unlike conversational subtlety. It was decided.
He looked to the men and women currently filtering into the mess. These were the ones he had chosen for the next task: eliminating Wythgoeth influence in the Black Drake’s Navy. If they completed that satisfactorily, they would be promoted to Inquisitorial status. The Mind-readers’ official name would be the Division of Inquisitors, they would safeguard the integrity of the members of the navy and keep malevolent influences out of their minds. These SI’s that the humans had constructed would be incredibly useful for such work. I think I’ll need to get my people the proper access for every ship, greater than what a Ship’s Captain has, they can’t be overruled in the field. Inquisitors are required to wield the Hold Lord’s authority without question, delay, or obstruction.
He saw Major Jergon walking his way, and moved to meet him. “Major.” The man stopped and saluted him, awaiting instruction. “I require two things before we begin. One: The men and women on the list I provided you are to have authority with the SI’s that is greater than any Ship’s Captain in the Black Drake’s Navy. This includes any override codes that the Void Spectres possess. Two: Organise our new members into squads of five. Try to keep a minimum of three imperial marines to a squad. I know the list is top heavy in that direction. Once that has been done, let me know and we will leave for the internal domicile. It will there be safe to discuss everything.”
The major saluted him, “Yes, Adjunct. Thus shall it be.” He turned and began to call out orders.
Good. The man was as efficient as his file promised. There would be no issue from that quarter. Jackson allowed his gaze to wander around the room. There was a bubble of space surrounding him. No one wanted to be too near his aura when he was active. Death’s Surety was not a comfortable thing to be near. As he matured as a dragon, his control would increase. He had only to endure the problems it caused in the meantime. He pulled out his datapad again and began typing notes for what was to come. Plans needed to be made. The Hold was going to be an unofficial organisation, but that unofficial organisation would control the very real organisation of the Black Drake’s Navy. When the auditors arrived, the navy would be able to be turned over to the Operatic Empire without harm to the structure of the Hold. That was the goal. The Void Spectres would never be the same. They had to change to fit the new structure their journey ahead would require. This would hammer the navy into something unseen in the empire – a navy made entirely of men and women qualified by the Void Spectres. Every element of the Black Drake Navy would be a QRF with leeway to act with independence and proactive. They would be loyal, they would be competent, and they would be brutally efficient. He would make it so.
He had to make it so. They didn’t have the Operatic Empire’s usual army of lawyers, accountants, ministers, and administrators to fill in the gaps for them these next three years. They wouldn’t have supply dumps and reinforcements. Instead they would have their fabricators and whatever resources they could scrounge up between here and there. These imperial officers hadn’t paid much attention to the star charts they had been provided yet, and much of it was unknown to them besides. He knew many of these systems, and they were strong, they were independent, and they were brutal in their desire to maintain separation from the Empire of the Celestial Skies. The way to their homeworld would not be a lonesome trip, it would be a three-year conquest, at minimum, more likely four or five.
He looked up and saw the individual squads gathering before him. He snapped his tail against the ground quick, like a whip. The crack that sounded split through the noise and chatter of the entire room. They all looked to him, even those not a part of the 1st Company. He waited, letting the silence settle, giving them time to form a first impression of him as a superior, and giving himself time to for a first impression of them as soldiers. In that gathered silence his chilled voice, smooth as river stones, ran through the room, “I see gathered here before me the makings of greatness. Come, we shall gather in the Internal Domicile, there we shall come to an understanding.”
He turned and began to walk to one of the corridors. Major Jergson was the first to fall in behind him, closely followed by corporal One-hand, who grabbed the standard with her perfectly good second hand. The rest of the company filed into line in organised chaos. Jackson had never set foot on this vessel and knew nothing of its secrets, but all vessels of the Empire of the Celestial Skies followed similar patterns, and this one was no exception. The Internal Domicile was a dragon’s throne room and his den, the centre of his hold and his family. It was a place entirely protected against espionage, unwanted violence, and the outside. It would be perfect for my needs, he thought. The Mind-readers, the Inquisition are going to be surrounded in secrets. Rumours shall follow in their wake and fear shall keep the curious at bay and the unruly compliant. People tended to more readily submit to authority if it was authority they knew bore secrets that only they were privy to, it made them more believable as a force of nature than as a naval officer. To combat the daemons of the dark, they needed the force of natural law. This navy would never again have a Wythgoesh problem. Worlds without end.
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He could tell when the humans behind him recognised the first chamber in the Internal Domicile. He heard their muttered comments. It was the same room that they had first seen a dragon on their viewscreens. The great throne sat on the opposite side of the large chamber, and to their left were several large holes drilled into the stone wall. To the right was a large metal door, closed and locked. Jackson continued walking until he stood in the centre of the relief carved into the floor. It is fitting, he thought, that the Mind-readers should begin standing on the relief of the slaughter of the hidden. It had been the Rising Sun’s greatest achievement, ferreting out those dragons in the battle of Eternal Night that had succumbed to the Wythgoesh influence on their senses.
He stood in silence as the squads formed up in ranks and then stood at attention, the new standard hanging above them. This, he thought, was the beginning of a new age.
-x-
“Twenty-five hundred! Twenty-five hundred! Do you realise that there are twenty-five hundred zettabytes of code? Do you know what that means? We can’t trust the Sis to validate this for us, because we’re auditing them! Can you even begin to comprehend the massive SNAFU on our hands?”
Lieutenant commander Gahst looked through him as he spoke, chief Cabal could feel it. “I know you are ordering us to work with the Stalkers, but they want to manually audit our system! In the void! In enemy territory! Manually! It’s insane! I won’t do it!”
She turned her gaze to major Drystone. “Has he been like this the entire time?”
“Yes, sir. It’s been impressive in its continuity and volume. His team have not even begun to cooperate with us yet.”
Her eyes sharpened as she glared with malicious intent at the chief engineer of the Mother’s Plea. He opened his mouth to speak again but was ruthlessly shut down. “No. No more. If you value your position in this navy you will not utter another word other than ‘yes sir’. Am I understood?”
He ground his teeth. This woman did not understand. She was a lieutenant commander. She should understand. She was the lieutenant commander of the Void Spectres. She shouldn’t be this stupid! His mouth worked for a few moments before he could force out the obligatory “yes, sir.”
She nodded. “Good. I was beginning to think we had promoted an idiot.” He puffed up at that and almost opened his mouth before he caught her eye and thought better of it. “Definitely didn’t promote an idiot. Good. Perhaps, then, you can understand two concepts that you shall find of most vital importance to your life and continued employment within the Fourth Imperial Navy. They are these:
“First, that there is a chain of command in the Imperial Navy, of which you are but a single link; higher placed than some, perhaps, but only a single link nonetheless. This chain of command is not only an organisational structure, it is also the chain with which I will beat you until you recognise that I am in command. I, not you. I, not your new commander, highly qualified as she is, but me. I am in command because I wield this chain. I wield this chain because our commandant, yes chief engineer Cabal, I say our commandant because he is your commandant too, little though you care for administration. I wield this chain of command because our,” she stressed that word beyond all bearing, ”gave it to me. He issued me orders once White Corners came back up, to keep things running smoothly where he can’t be.
“Things aren’t running smoothly here, chief engineer Cabal, not smoothly at all. And,” she looked all around the corridor then settled her gaze back on him, “our commandant is not present. He can not be here at this time. Therefore I am in his place, chain of command in hand, ready to beat the problem into submission. I find that the only reason there is an adage about not being able to beat a dead horse is because that horse was not beaten strongly enough, nor with the proper technique. I do believe that you shall find that I am possessed of both the strength to wield this chain, and the knowledge of the proper way with which to wield it. Additionally, you might desire to consider that you are the fourth, count it, fourth chief engineer to have refused to obey lawful orders duly issued to you by the Silent Stalkers. I have had enough of this. I’m of a strong mind to flay the next one of you who makes me think about losing my temper, as a witness and a warning to the others about the foolishness of pretending that the chain I hold in my hands is powerless to harm you.”
He made to speak again, but she silenced him with a gesture and spoke over the beat, “Second, that our systems have been compromised in unknown ways and our SIs, yes, those beloved SIs that are impregnable to outside contamination. Have. Been. Contaminated. We cannot trust them. We must go through their dataholds line by line until the contaminants are found and removed. The nice major here,” she gestured gently to major Drystone, “is in possession of not one, not two, but fifteen SI Auditor Arks. Fifteen. They should be able to go through the SI’s code line by line, comparing everything to what it should be. It will take time, but it must be done. It is not manual. It is not slow. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. It is fast. You are slow. Be fast.”
He grimaced. Truthfully, he had not forgotten how many they had, but he didn’t want to go line by line until one was made available to him. It seemed like a waste of time. “It is not a waste of time,” she said. He jerked his eyes up, staring at her. “No, chief engineer Cabal, I do not know your thoughts, you said that part out loud. It is not a waste of time because your team needs to know you can trust the data coming out of that SI to begin to catalogue the many, many issues the Mother’s Plea has gathered unto herself in the last twenty-four hours. If you try to do those manually, it will take far longer than a non-significant audit of your ship’s SI. You will start work on that now, working in anti-chronological order. Try to learn if you can determine when things went wrong. If you can do that, it will speed up the SI audit of your ship significantly. If you can’t, then at least you weren’t repairing damage by covering up damage you were unaware of.
“Are those two concepts understood by you? And remember, there are only two words that are acceptable to use.”
“Yes, sir.”
“As it should be.” She pulled out here datapad and asked the Hidden Dagger’s SI, “Did you record that conversation?”
“I did record the conversation lieutenant commander Gahst, and have logged chief engineer Cabal’s acknowledgement of the lawful orders received, and his agreement to carry out those orders in good faith.”
“Thank you Ship’s Intelligence.” She closed the datapad’s screen and put it back on her waist, glaring at chief engineer Cabal the entire time. “You may go now,” she dismissed him, “you are wanted where the work is being done, and not within this corridor.”
He saluted her and turned to go, fuming the entire time. I haven’t been dressed down like that since I was a spaceman. How dare she! How dare she! I will do this work, he thought, but I will destroy her career and end her with ‘this chain of command’ when we make it back to Homeworld. We’ll see what the Guild of the Imperial Engineer has to say about this.”
-x-
Major Drystone watched the man as he stormed down the corridor, away from them. “Sir, was that wise?”
She chuckled. “Wise? Perhaps not. But disobeying a lawful order because you feel important is deadly. I was not joking about corporal consequences. They will happen. Examples will be made. Any who doubt that will receive enlightenment when the court-marshals are broadcast live.”
Drystone’s eyes widened in shock. “Live? That’s not usual.”
“No, no it is not. However, our commandant has decided that the Fourth will now be handled the Void Stalker way. As you know, being a Void Stalker yourself, that means discipline at all costs. Lack of discipline will end us on our journey home. He will not have it. He has informed me that it will not be mandatory viewing, because too much must be done now, but it will be saved to the permanent historical archives of every SI of every ship in the Fourth, and he has logged an order that it remain available for personal consumption at any time. Indefinitely.
“What is about to happen is going to be viewed by every crew member and every soldier these ships carry until they are decommissioned. We are making history here, major, history; and it will not be ignored, it will not be cast aside, and it will not be silenced.”
