* * * * *

It's silly to go on pretending that under the skin we are all brothers. The truth is more likely that under the skin we are all cannibals, assassins,
traitors, liars, hypocrites, poltroons.
-Henry Miller (1891 - 1980)

* * * * *

Chapter 2:-
"Dramatis Personae"


His lips and cheeks no longer rouged and powdered in the way of the civil servant, the simpering face gone and with his hair twisted into a stylised ponytail, Seiji easily passed for the businessman he was impersonating. Only the twinkling eyes remained the same in his soft features.

After his meeting with the Prime Minister there had been the usual activity, the collection of equipment and the checking of cover stories, and then he had boarded his flight off Jurai itself and to Colonial Planet 0-315. Unfortunately, it wasn't a first class passenger cruiser, but a rather grimy freighter, with a crew to match. The captain's palm had been oily beneath Seiji's own when they had shook hands, and the man's teeth had set crooked in his mouth when he had smiled at Seiji's 'gift'. There would be no problems with this trip, he had said, and Seiji had believed him. The amount of money he had passed across the brute's hands was enough to keep a large satellite's economy stable.

When the ship stopped at the Juraian Border Checkpoint just outside the solar system that bought loyalty proved true. The crew had kept quiet about their new member, although there was no need as Seiji had jumped ship as soon as the docking began. Without anyone's knowledge he bought return tickets for business class, under a false name, for Earth and the other outlying planets of Juraian control.
'Always take twice the time, when a single looks good' as his Covert Operations instructor had always said.

So Seiji (now Hitomi Kinitami, deputy sub-vice-president for Gowajirisa Ship Engines Ltd. Or so his passport said) sat in his business suit, his ponytail digging lightly into the headrest of his seat. The ship was much like all the other public transporters in the galaxy. Rows and tiers of seats, bordering thin aisles that seemed to be exclusively used by the stewardesses who smiled and handed out tasteless snacks and drinks. Business class was at the front of the craft and he had found to his relief that there were only three other people in the cabin. One man, dressed in an impressive Tandowan gown and with an equally impressive girth, looked like a diplomat or envoy of some kind, while the other two appeared to be just businessmen. The only women up here were the stewardesses.

He drummed his fingers lightly against the armrests and looked at the storage locker above him for the first and final time. In it was his kit bag, which the Custom's scanners had shown to contain the usual collection of clothes and an adventure novel for the flight. The military grade dampener sewn into the lining had done its job, jamming the tell-tale signature of weapons. It amazed him how something the size of a coin should be able to tell a sophisticated piece of equipment, like a Custom's scanner, that it was looking at something entirely different. He didn't dwell on it. That was the engineers' task, not his.

"Drink, Kinitami San?"

He span around his seat, his eyes drilling into the stewardess who was leaning over a trolley of beverages. He blinked. "I'm sorry?" he asked, "I was miles away."
She smiled in the calculated and asexual way that only travel hostesses can. "A drink, sir?"
He nodded, "Juraian Whiskey." A pause, "Is it hot?"
It was her turn to nod. She handed him a glass of mildly expensive Juraian whiskey, nicely warmed.
"Thank you." he said, in a voice that hardly meant it, then put his head back and closed his eyes. In the darkness he heard the trolley rattle on its way down the plush carpet, its cargo jangling, and he slowly, he began to tune out all noises.
Meditation. Zen Power. The heightening of Chi. Applying calming Juraian Power. It all meant the same thing in the end.
First went the buzzing conversation of those in the economy cabin behind him, followed closely by the sound of the stewardesses talking amongst themselves. When they were gone, there was only a steady beating in the dark.

His heart continued its bass tattoo. The glass in his hand shifted from dull warmth to cold, the coolness seeping through his trouser leg where he held it on his thigh. It caused no discomfort. There was only the darkness, and that was his place. Very slowly, the rhythm began to quiet, its deep thud growing ever more slow, ever more shallow. It disappeared along with everything else and now Seiji was truly in the dark.

Silence.

He raised the glass to his lips and took a sip. A warm, soothing taste in the void. No sound from his throat, his lips, anything. It was here that he could imagine, in this inky blackness of his mind, where he could remember and dream and all the other things that normal people would engage in without thinking about. He concentrated, calling up a vast cavern, its walls and ceiling a mass of tiny pigeon holes, and each one contained a single glowing gem of a memory. He reached out mentally and took one, one that grew dimly amongst the others, and held it.

* * * * *

Jiro was standing in the entrance hall. He knew that his father was beside him, and very quietly he reached his hand up and took that bastion's hand. The entirety of the room was bustling with people, and to him, a boy barely five in Juraian years, the thousands of bustling bodies towering above him and off into the distance was like some kind of sea. A great swarming sea of colours.
The hall was huge as and in itself. Hundreds of yards long, and nearly double that again in width, with the walls carved from the tree that it had been made from. The din was phenomenal as the sounds of the palace all coalesced into this room and echoed from its hard surfaces. At regular intervals, standing in front of the wall's buttressed ribs, staunch faced Royal Bodyguards stood to attention, weapons cocked. Jiro felt a strange knot of awe in his gut as he stared at these impassive men.
Then he felt his father's hand let go of his and heard the sound of the man crouch beside him. "Jiro," said his father's voice in his ear, calm as always, "I want you to be very careful around here. No walking off, okay?" Jiro nodded. The man continued, "You'll get daddy in lots of trouble if you walk off."
He stood back up and brushed the dust from his knees before taking Jiro's hand again, and the pair weaved their way through the crowd and up to the security detectors that lined the hall a two-thirds in. Jiro looked at the man with the soft hat who checked his father's plastic card and then motioned the pair through a fused arch of wood and metal. When they were through that and another man in a hat had looked at his father's pass, they were allowed into a corridor, nearly as massive as the hall and many times as long.

And then the next bit became hazy and get Jiro got the impression of lost time. He knew that he had let go of the hand for a second and that he had followed a soldier in a uniform that he hadn't seen before. This one was mustard coloured with trousers, overcoat and a beret, and when Jiro had lost sight of this strangely clothed man and turned back his father had gone. Where he had stood was a big father shaped hole and more and more of that busy multi-coloured sea poured around him.

He was standing here now though, looking out the window into the courtyard below him. As he'd walked in search, the crowds had thinned, seemingly depending on direction he traveled. In this corridor there was no one, not even the Bodyguards he'd seen everywhere else. The window was a low thing, starting at a man's waist, and so to Jiro it came up to the base of his neck. He stood there and watched the grass below and the sky above it and all the other windows that looked out on the garden below.

Jiro was not a natural born voyeur, but what he saw next, he innately knew was something private. He had been looking at the sky, staring at the clouds that were floating across it and trying to count how many there were, when he heard something in the courtyard below. He lowered his gaze and cocked his head to watch the girl that was running on the grass, another woman watching her. He knew the woman from somewhere, although he just couldn't place the face. It was a soft one, though, with a face that was overjoyed. She was sitting on one of the low walls that surrounded the trees that were, in turn, dotted around the courtyard. Her hair was blue, and that made him look away for a second, although he had no recollection as to why he did. Then he turned back and looked at the girl.

She was about his age and wearing a pale violet skirt. Her hair was done in two ponytails that hung out at right angles to each other from the back of her head, and in his own naively innocent words, he would have said, if asked, that she was quite pretty. At the time she was sitting on the grass, picking at a large white flower that was growing at the base of the tree opposite the woman (who was obviously, in Jiro's eyes, her mother).

As he watched he saw the woman raise her head and look at him. He froze suddenly, stock still, torn between ducking beneath the sill or running. Then she waved at him. Still he stood there, rooted to the spot. The girl turned and looked at her mother, who stopped waving long enough to point Jiro out to her and say something. The little girl looked up at him but did nothing.

Very gingerly, Jiro raised his hand to wave. He held it up and gave a quick jiggle at the wrist and it was then that a much larger and much more forceful hand landed on his shoulder and he couldn't suppress the gasp of fear as a voice in his other ear said,

"Mr. Kinitami."

* * * * *


He sat bolt upright and his eyes flashed open. The stewardess standing over him suddenly jerked backwards, her hand flew to her lips as his head snapped around and his eyes glowered at her. Her mouth opened once and then, "Mr. Kinitami, I... I'm sorry to wake you up, sir, but-"
She took a step back down the aisle. Seiji glared at her and then looked away, keeping his eyes low and fixed on his whiskey glass. His fingers were clenched so tight around it that the knuckles glowed white.
"Yes?" he asked.
"You were... having a nightmare, sir. I thought I'd better wake you up." With his gaze directed at the glass, he could see nothing else but his legs and the back of the chair in front, but even so he knew that her face must be flushed. Scared. Her voice gave that away, no matter how much she tried to control it.
He nodded. "Thank you."
"Do you want me to get you another drink?" There was still that slight quiver in her voice.
Very carefully Seiji looked up at her. "I'm fine, ma'am. Just a dream." He held out the empty glass for her, which she took. She took another step back when he suddenly asked, "I wasn't saying anything was I?"
A pause, "Just one thing, Mr. Kinitami." Then she paused. He looked at her expectantly. "You were saying the same thing over and over again." She stopped again, and so he arched an eyebrow eliciting her continuation, "'Not her. Don't let her be there.'"

Seiji sat there without breathing for a few moments and then blinked, smiled. "I'm sorry." he said, "I do that sometimes. I'm sorry."
The stewardess smiled back, slightly more at ease, "To be honest I only woke you up in case you woke the others." To which Seiji noticed that the lights had been dimmed and the three other men in the cabin, and probably the flight crew, were asleep.
"Well thank you." he said again, and with that the woman stepped forward, gave his arm a gentle squeeze and then set off for the curtain that hid the crew from the passengers. Behind him he could hear the collective snores of the economy passengers and the deep bass thrum from the vibrations of the engines.

He sat there for another few minutes to make sure no one was coming back and that everyone else in the cabin really was asleep. When that was proved to be true, he flipped down the meal tray that was attached to the seat in front of him and pressed the on/off switch on the screen behind it. All first class passengers gained a 'compliment' of the transport company; a sub-space communications port to make business meetings that little easier while in the cold infinity of space.
Seiji took a palm-top computer out of his pocket and, placing it on the tray, pulled a thin wire from a nodule on its top which jacked into a plug next to the screen. The object, affectionately known as a 'tweeter' by the Intelligence Bureau's External Operations agents, gave off a low whine as it went about its business. The screen flashed with static as the machine scanned all incoming and outgoing communications on the ship and then piggy-backed its way onto one of the frequencies, but not before encoding its own messages and 'stomping' any detecting devices that might recognise it. He waited as it began its auto-dial, and then sat forward when the screen changed to show a security officer in Juraian Communication's uniform, wearing a pair of headphones. The officer cut through brusquely. "What do you need, Agent 3-6A?"
"Open a link to Prime Minister Hirofumi."

The screen blinked for a few seconds as it switched channels and then, just as Seiji was fearing the worst, clicked on to show a view of the Prime Minister, obviously being taken from his desk.
Hirofumi looked down at the screen and then suddenly breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank the Goddess you're all right, Agent."
"Sir?" asked Seiji, keeping his voice low.
The Prime Minister, sitting and keeping his eyes on the screen, took a white lace kerchief from off-screen and mopped his brow with it. "We thought we'd lost you."
"Lost me?"
"When you jumped ship from that cargo carrier." The Prime Minister continued. He stopped mopping his brow and started around his neck, "You could at least tell us when you're going to be taking side-trips."
Seiji's eyes tightened slightly. So they had been keeping tabs on him! He pushed that to the back of his mind. "Well, I just couldn't stand the damn thing's decor." He smiled impishly.
Hirofumi shook his head, "Can you tell me where you are? I can have Diplomatic Corp. officials meet you when you reach planet fall."
"That's not necessary, sir. I don't think we need Dip. Corp. on this. And besides, if someone is listening in to this conversation I'd be a sitting duck out here."
"You're on a public transporter." The kerchief went back to the brow again.
Seiji nodded, eyes transfixed on the cloth, "Yes. Yes, erm, is it hot over there?"
The Prime Minister stopped his dabbing and stared at the screen as though the other man was mad. "What?" he said, and then realising held the handkerchief out and off camera, "Oh. No. I've got a meeting with the Council in an hour." A twitch that could have been a grin or a snarl tugged at his lips, "Nerves. I expect you know how it is."
"I can't say that I do, sir. Now, I've opened this communiqué because I need information that I couldn't get off my orders sheet." With the return to formality, the two men's faces became harder. Poker faces.
"Fire away, 3-6A"
"My orders have been taken care of, destroyed, and it's been committed to memory. However there appears to have been no report on enemy strengths. No real operational climate report."
The Prime Minister's face stayed blank. "You said yourself that you've read the Galaxy Police Report."
"That's my enemy report?" Seiji couldn't keep the incredulity out of his voice.
"I wouldn't have sent you if I didn't think you could handle it."
Seiji sat up and glanced around to make sure that no one was awake and then ducked his head back down, as close as he could to the screen. "So if I wasn't here, this operation wouldn't have been authorised," he hissed and then looked away, "Great."

"And then what?" asked Hirofumi. He too had leant forward so his face nearly filled the screen, "And then what, Agent? We'd be in a bigger mess, wouldn't we?"
"I know, sir. It's just-" Seiji stopped.
The Prime Minister moved back again. "You should feel just a little bit privileged, Agent. There's only three people in the know here. And you and I are two of them."

It's lucky the Queens don't know about it otherwise there'd be no one left alive to be in the know, thought Seiji, but once again he bit his tongue.
"You'll go through with it, Agent. We both know you can." Hirofumi opened his mouth to continue, but then closed it again. There was a long pause as the two men wondered what to say.

Eventually Seiji broke the silence. "You know, I never thought Prince Yosho would ever have grand-children. You know, without Ayeka."
"It's gone far beyond grand-children now," said Hirofumi, and then half to himself, "A lot more." He looked down at the desk and then back up again. "Agent, there was no stipulation about how the target was to be sanctioned. I know you wouldn't deliberately... desecrate the corpse, but in this operation it has been asked that the... well, the cadaver should be as pristine as possible."
"Of course sir."
"And.. well, you might need to kill the target more than the usual number of times," Hirofumi said quickly.
Seiji blinked. "I'm sorry?"
"If the target has the Goddess on its side I have no idea about whether that may provoke some kind of response. It's been a long time since I went to Shrine-School, but I can at least partially remember some of the more vivid religious stories and-"
"What? Turning the unenlightened inside out? Bringing the dead back to life? Those vivid stories?" Seiji raised an eyebrow.
"Yes. And as I haven't had a way to ask any of our databases or staff, or see a priest for that matter, I wouldn't like to say anything about it." The kerchief appeared in his hand again, but hovered immobile a few inches from his forehead, "And forget any personal feelings you have on this matter, Agent."

Seiji couldn't stop the grimace that crawled across his face. "Had to bring that up again, didn't you."
"And I know you are a monarchist patriot, and a Goddess fearing one at that, Agent, but I wouldn't recommend praying before this operation. It probably wouldn't be good to call undue attention to yourself."
"No," said Seiji sagely, "No. That's why I'm sitting on a public transport conferring with the Prime Minister of Jurai about a high profile assassination that..." He stopped as someone on the other side of the cabin gave a doubly nasal snore. He waited, then continued more quietly, "That will decide the fate of the future and all the people that will reside in it. No, I'm sure that untoward attention would be very, very dangerous to my health." His blue eyes flashed angrily.
"Agent," said Hirofumi calmly, "Do you know the saying, 'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread'?"
Seiji fumed quietly. "Yes, it's that Earth language, English or something. Why?"
"It means don't just jump into something without weighing it up first." The Prime Minister's kerchief returned to his brow, "Keep that in mind, Agent 3-6A. Close communications."

The screen went blank and the tweeter gave a small chirp. Seiji pocketed it and flipped the tray back into place. He tried closing his eyes, but every time he did he got a strange sensation, a blurry image in the blackness. Soon he gave the very idea of sleep up, and sat there thinking about the target. The target and everything that surrounded it.
Very soon he was snoring.

* * * * *

"Name?"

Over the years there had been many constructions bolted onto the old Palace. This one was a massive hall (in fact the entire palace was built to gigantic proportions) and its vast area had been divided into hundreds of smaller segments by the wood walled cubicles that had been set up for this occasion. In each cubicle, only a couple of yards square, a hard faced corporal or sergeant of the Juraian military sat, surrounded by a sea of pens and paper forms.

It was that time of year for military application. Again.
Every half-year the Palace would be opened and the army and navy talent scouts would be sent out to ply their trade in the various schools, trying to attract soon to be ex-pupils into the ranks. War's hell, but there's always more meat for the grinder, as the Generals found with no small satisfaction as the unwashed masses just kept rolling in.

Having queued in a snake of men that wound through the less used areas of the palace grounds, Jiro had finally got a meeting with the denizen of the tiny coop furthest from the hall's entrance door. Having weaved around the hundreds of other booths, bumping into other school-leavers and non-commissioned officers, he wasn't looking his best. He did his best to make his shirt appear the right way around before answering.

"Jiro, sir."

The sergeant looked back at him with bored eyes. "Last name?"
"That's my full name, sir."
The sergeant looked even more irked. "You're having a laugh, aren't you?"
"No sir. I don't use my last name." He gave what he hoped was a winning smile.

"Whatever," the sergeant muttered and then wrote it on the form in front of him. "Age and previous employment?"
"Two hundred. Just left school."
There was a brief pause as the soldier wrote this down, and then held out his hand, "School reference."

Jiro rummaged through his pocket and removed a grubby, folded piece of manuscript. He passed it across the desk, the winning smile reduced to a grimace.
The sergeant unfurled it and spread it out on the table. He rubbed at what looked like a coffee stain and tried to smooth out the creases. Finally he looked up at Jiro, looked back down at the paper and then slid it underneath the application form. "Primary preferred branch of military duty?"

"Royal Bodyguard," Jiro said instantly.

"Royal Guard?" The sergeant looked taken aback, "You sure about that? Not Army? Navy?"

Jiro shook his head, "Royal Bodyguard."

The sergeant sniffed and put some more writing down on the form. "Right. Well, your application will be looked over within the next few hours. If you could come back here in," He looked at his watch, "Six hours, and show this," He picked a little yellow card with various numbers printed on it, "At the desk, you'll be given your mandatory fitness examination, psychological profiling and all that." Giving the card to Jiro, he picked up the two sheets he had been using, stapled them together and then jammed them into a slot in the white-washed wall behind him.

"NEXT!"

* * * * *

There are two things that are always certain; Death and taxes.

I'm not the right man to ask about the state of the Galactic Union's economy. I mean, I haven't paid taxes since the day I joined... But I am the right man for the killing.

I don't do it very often... but it happens. It has to, it's the law of nature. People have to die for the greater good. Some of them didn't deserve it, I know.
They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you feel bad about it. Very bad.

But you get used to it and there is a bit... of... well, enjoyment in the work. It's sick, I realise that now. Always did; deep down at least. But it has to be admitted. The major motivation for my being recruited was that I had a... moral flexibility. Especially where anti-monarchists and non-patriots were concerned. In fact, I'm sure they had to burn a lot of that hatred out of me. Knock me down to my most base and build me back up again.

There was this one op. My fifth or sixth... It's so long ago now I can't remember, but I was doing a bucket-job - that's surveillance work - on a safe-house. I can't remember whose safe house it was. I think it was the Ascidians, but it might just as well have been one of those feline terrorist cells. They're always starting something... felines are all the same, and not just because they have pointed ears and long tails... but I digress. That was the first day it hit the fan, and I was there to get splashed.

It was meant to be simple. Course, that's a joke. As if we'd get anything 'simple'.

We had this beat up old truck, about fifty years old, rusty, and every day we'd drive up and park outside their safe house. It just happened that this safe house they were using was above this restaurant in the centre of the city, not a posh restaurant but this little bistro thing. Served good food. Rock oysters a specialty, if I remember correctly. Anyway, this truck was done up to be a telecommunications thing for the planets holo-lines. We all dressed up in these dirty red and blue jumpsuits, rubbed axel grease over our faces and then went climbing up communication-poles. Ludicrous. Hilarious. It was like being back at school, but with less wedgies.
But that wasn't the cool part. The back of the truck had a subspace portal in it, so that if you looked through the rear door or the windows, it looked like an empty truck, but if you stepped in, you actually entered this room that was about three times the size of the truck. Listener equipment, biometric cameras, you name it, it was in there. Got it on lend-lease off Counter Intelligence. It even had room for beds for the eight of us! I wish we had that luxury normally. Nowadays I sit in a hole in the ground for five weeks with a pair of binoculars.

Anyway, we're making headway on the situation... got some juicy info, ready to transmit it back to the relays when I decide I'm feeling a little bit hungry. "Who wants food?" And the eight of us were food connoisseurs, believe me, so I step out and wander over to the restaurant for eight bags of rock oysters to go.
So I'm waiting in the queue to order, and BANG! I spin around and the truck's exploding in slow motion. Shop front shatters, people being thrown like rag-dolls... And I just stand there. The tables near the shop window are knocked over, the customers are riddled with glass, and I'm just standing there. Because, that isn't supposed to happen.

It's not supposed to end that way. But it did.

News called it an 'unprecedented terrorist attack'.
Yeah... sure was. Apparently one of the felines leant out the window and hit the truck with an anti-tank laser. Popped it like a, what's that Earth thing? Piñata? Seventeen dead. Not counting the two unborn children still in their mother's womb.

And that wasn't the worst of it because not only did the culprits get away, but we also managed to smuggle the truck out from the police's forensics impound. Its subspace generator had jumped when the vehicle exploded. Those seven men in it, seven men I knew personally, weren't anywhere to be found. For all the clever ideas the Techs put forward, they'd got no real clue. They've got some now, nine-hundred years on, and I wish they haven't...
When a dimension collapses, the soul, whatever you want to call it, survives. They think they're probably still floating around out there, in infinity, for infinity. Ever alive, ever screaming, in their own personal galaxy... Not even got the dignity of death.
Didn't get any medals either. I mean, how do you give out posthumous medals if the receiver isn't dead?

It's about this time that you start waking up at night in a cold sweat, screaming your lungs out.

Hell. From then on it just got worse...

Jiro spent most of the waiting time sleeping on one of the chairs that had been set out in an impromptu waiting room. It was hard to keep himself asleep, what with all the bustle and the conversations, followed by the repeatedly shouted, "NEXT!" that was raised every time another volunteer was moved along and another took his place.

Waking, he opened his eyes and looked around. The room had thinned of people quite considerably, the chairs that had been set out were mostly empty, and those that were filled looked like their occupants had been sitting for some time. He was suddenly overcome with a worry that he'd missed his place and fumbling with his sleeve, he checked his watch. He still had another quarter of an hour to go.

"What are you going in for?" asked a voice from nearby.

Jiro looked around. A youth a few years older than him, wearing a Royal Artillery uniform, sat behind him and a couple of seats to his right. He was looking at Jiro intently.
"What?"
"What are you going in for? What branch?" the Artillery Boy asked again.
"Oh, Guards. Royal Guards," replied Jiro. The other man's face changed to a look of amusement. "You're trying to join the Guards? As in Bodyguards?"
"Yes."
The amused face split into a wide grin. "You want to join the Guards?" A shake of the head, "You're kidding."

Jiro opened his mouth to give him an answer that probably wouldn't have won him a friend, but just as he did a voice rang out from the front of the room, "Is there a Mr. Jiro here? Mr. Jiro?"

As he stood up, the Artillery Boy leant across and patted him on the back, "Good luck on your post, Jiro. You're going to need it."
Jiro repaid the compliment with an angry stare and marched to the door.

An officer wearing a badge on his epaulettes that distinguished him as a Training Instructor handed Jiro a wad of papers, that turned out to be his school reference amongst other things, then pointed off down the corridor, "Room 201. They'll get you started." He turned back to the waiting room. Jiro waited for a second to see if anything more was to be said, and finding nothing, did as he had been told.

Room 201 turned out to be little more than a cupboard with two chairs and a coffee table. A thin balding man, Mister Famanai, sat in the chair facing the door, dressed in civilian clothes. Apparently he was an ex-psychological profiler for the Army's Communications & Signals Unit, and he gave off a near tangible aura of calm and understanding.

"Mr. Jiro, welcome," he said and shook the younger man's hand, "Sit, please." Jiro did so. "Do you have your papers?" asked Famanai.
Passing them to him, Jiro took a look at the coffee table. It was smeared with papers of every conceivable size and colour, much like the desk of the sergeant Jiro had met earlier. Fimanai leafed through the stapled pages casually before putting them on top of the assorted stack. "Well, Mr. Jiro, I'm Mister Famanai. That Mister is actually my first name. My parents had a sense of humour."

Jiro nodded blandly. Noting that his joke had fallen flat Famanai continued, "I don't know if your rights have been explained to you. Have they?"
"Rights?"
"I'll take that as a no. Up until the moment you swear the Oath Of Allegiance to Jurai, you have the immutable right to walk out of here."
Ignoring the fact that he had no idea what 'immutable' meant, Jiro nodded, "I can just walk out? At any time?"

"Oh yes. Any moment. If it gets too much or you realise that you were smoking something a little stronger than tobacco and signed up while in a hallucinogenic fog, you can walk out. Any reason whatsoever. It's marked down on your military records that you were 'unsatisfactory material' and you never get a chance to re-volunteer. It saves the government money and it stops a world of grief for those children, and their parents, who just signed up to look big. And the best thing is, no one need know. You don't even have to tell your family. Simple as that.
"Secondly, if you live near here... do you live near the palace?" Jiro shook his head. "Well, if you did, you could sleep at home, but we'll put you up in a billet in the palace grounds for the next week. You'll obviously be sharing."
"That's not a problem."
Famanai picked up Jiro's application papers again and placed them on his lap. "When we've finished this little talk, I'll take you along to the medical examiner. That reminds me, you'll have a number of tests;" He held up his hand and started counting them out on his fingers, "Medical, psychological, and mental / intelligence. The first one is to see whether you're up to it physically. If you flunk it, you can try again next time we start asking for people to come forward. Psychological testing is to see what sort of person you are. Officer material, whether you have inhibitions, and so on and so forth." He opened the papers again and looked down at them. Without looking back up, he finished off his speech, "Mental and Intelligence is to see what kind of mind you have. Whether you're a maths man or whatever. Of course, if you are a maths man you'll be snapped up for the Navy immediately. Not enough space-superiority-fighter pilots around these days."
Finally he raised his eyes to Jiro and smiled.
"Once we've done them, you'll probably go through some more tests. Just variations of those three, and completing that you'll get to choose your unit."

"I already chose my unit," Jiro said suddenly, "I put Royal Guard down."
Eyes darted back to the sheet on the lap. "Oh yes. Well, you have to realise that this is a preference. Half the time, some joker will look at it and have you put in the 'Royal Household Bodyguards Auxiliary Food Supplies Unit'."
"You mean a cook?"
"No. I mean a man who drives a truck loaded with crates of rations." He took a pen from a pocket in his civvies and noted something in the margin of the sheet.
"Alright. If you wouldn't mind following me..."

He was taken to a doctor, who undressed him down to his undergarments and subjected him to an obscure coughing ritual that seemed only be favoured by those in the medical profession. He was given a reaction test and, soon after, a stick was placed in his mouth and he was made to say 'Ahhh'.
Eventually, the doctor handed him back his clothes and let him go behind a light green screen to redress. When he emerged, the doctor was on the other side of the room writing something.
It was very much like any other medical room. White-washed walls, with cream floor tiles and lights that seemed to make everything look like it was a bad dream. Running around the room, attached to the walls, was a series of worktops. Jiro walked over to the nearest and looked at the collection of instruments laid out on it; scalpels, measuring sticks, a metal and wood thing with a twin bladed coil and all manner of other objects made of bark and metal.
"Don't touch," said a voice behind him. Jiro turned and saw that the doctor was watching him intently. The medic shook his head angrily, "It doesn't matter whether they're butchers, bakers or candlestick makers, they all want to play with the scalpels."
Jiro pulled a face. "I was just looking."
"That's what they all say," said the doctor. He walked over and held out yet another piece of paper, "Until someone loses an eye."
Feeling a little guilty, as Jiro knew deep down that he had been going to pick it up, he took the paper.
"Room 6732 is where you'll get your mental examination," said the doctor. He pointed at the door. "Feel free to leave."
"But am I fit enough?"
With a baleful glare the doctor made an even more forceful motion at the door. "You won't be if you don't get out now."

In the mental test there were questions that ranged from the stupidly easy to the taxing to the purely impossible. Jiro was given an oral test by a stern faced battle-axe wearing a Naval Intelligence uniform and her hair done in a bun, and then he was passed along to a gentleman wearing a curious and rather alien (at least to Juraian viewing) charcoal suit and tie. He handled the mathematics side, which brought Jiro out in a light but cold sweat as he found that more than half the questions made little to no sense. Completing that he was bounced to another room where a captain from Army Intelligence sat with an artificially sentient computer and the two of them asked questions that seemed so trivial as to be unnecessary; "What breakfast did you have this morning?" "Did you eat it all?" "What about yesterday?" "Have you owned a pet?"
He was handed another piece of paper and the Captain stapled it to the rest of the sheets. "Room 56... Psychological evaluation."

Jiro's feet were really beginning to ache by now. It was stupid! He was just being passed around rooms like he was a parcel at a party game. Every time he arrived at a new room, a young man or woman would leave just as he made to knock and just as he left there was a young man or woman ready to knock. At least twice, he had arrived at a room to see a man or woman leaving, tears streaming down their faces. Whether this meant they had failed or not, Jiro had no clue, but he wasn't crying yet, so he must be doing something right. Jumped around six different psych rooms, he suffered an inkblot test (what they were being used for in this day and age, he had no idea), then was waited on by doctor in psychological warfare kit who just sat there staring at Jiro for ten whole minutes, smoking a cigarette, until another man came in and started asking questions. In another room, a woman with an antiqued wooden stopwatch shot words at him, expecting a response with the first thing that came to mind.

Four days later, Jiro knew that he wasn't going to be a space-superiority-fighter-pilot. Some of the things he had read that were written down about him had brought him to edge of punching the author... subject has a poor grasping of mathematics ... the subject's mental arithmetic is sub-standard ... grasping of spatial and geometric principles is poor. However, he had noted there were some good notes, most often scrawled in the margins, sometimes neatly written out in a space provided... reaction times above par ... language handling exemplary ... subject's eye-sight and hearing is above normal ... psychological evaluation proves subject is at worst, stable. The last one was an enigma, but Jiro was pleased with it.

After an aptitude test, where he was given a box full of pens and told to sort them out in order of colour and size as he saw fit, he was taken to the placement officer, Duty Sergeant Nishiki. Both the Duty Sergeant and Mister Famanai were there, sitting at yet another desk, something which Jiro was feeling sick to the stomach of by now. He was motioned to sit.

"Mr. Jiro," said Nishiki, "I see that you like languages."
Jiro nodded in reply. He did, in fact, like languages. When he had been given the mental test there had been a lot of questions on foreign understanding. He'd also put it on his placement sheet. After the third day he had been given two sheets, one with a list of military jobs on it, and a blank one to write on. He had been told to write, favourite at top, all the jobs he would like to apply for.

At the top he had written, Royal Bodyguard Security Division. Beneath that had come the Royal Bodyguard Marines, and under that he had written a succession of jobs. Naturally he had listed all navy jobs (minus pilot, which he didn't see himself getting anyway) as near the top as they could go. There was the Naval Intelligence Directorate (although the old angry woman who had run the mental test had made him think long and hard about whether he wanted to go in there), Fleet Atmosphere Arm, Naval Land Regiment, and many others. Then there came chemical warfare, psychological warfare, biological and nuclear warfare, combat ecology (which came under deforestation and other biology titles). Even below them there were more, all manner of weird and wonderful names which were mainly under the office of the Intelligence Bureau. This included such things as External Security and Internal Security (which had a sub-heading, Counter-Intelligence Dept.)
Jiro had left out all the main Auxiliary Units for the Army and Navy. Although they didn't sound too bad, even cushy, he had heard rumours about those unfortunates who got them. Either helping to construct a relay station on some far-flung moon, or being a human guinea pig for new military application diseases, certainly a booby prize.
The final two, at the very bottom, were Foreign Language Technician and Communication Auxiliary Services.

"Yes sir. I do like languages."
"Could you tell me how many you speak?"
"Two," said Jiro. Across the desk, the Duty Sergeant and Fimanai exchanged glances.
"It says here that you speak three."
"That's including Galactic Standard. I speak Riclotiion fluently and Sondonium relatively well."
There was a pregnant pause and then Nishiki gritted his teeth and looked back at his notes, "Can you drive a truck, Jiro?"

Jiro looked at him quizzically, "Drive a-" He stopped. "Are you saying that I failed everything above Foreign Language Technician?"
"And you failed that," said Nishiki, gently, "However, we can get you into the Communication Auxiliary Services. They have a lot of need for drivers. Moving equipment."
"You have to be joking," Jiro started. He stood up. "I can't believe this! You want to put me in some rear unit?"
"You can still work your way through the ranks-"
Jiro blanched, knocked the chair over as he stepped back, "It's not the ranks... I'm walking."
"I respect that, Jiro. But we think you should reconsider-" said Famanai slowly.
"No... It's my right."
The Duty Sergeant stood up also, "Jiro. If you walk now you'll never get a second chance at this."
"At what? Driving a truck?" he laughed, shocked, "I wanted to help my planet... not sit around driving a truck!"

"Well, if that is the case, Mr. Jiro," the Duty Sergeant said. He threw the wad of papers over his shoulder to lay scattered on the dull floor, "How would you feel if I offered you a job not on that list?"
"Job...?"

"First thing's first. Sit back down and sign this please." He opened a drawer in the desk and took out a further piece of paper and a pen. He put them on the desk on Jiro's side.

Jiro looked at them. Then he righted the chair he had knocked down, sat in it and lifted the paper. At its top, printed in neat block capitals, was 'OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT 1120'. There was a heavily worded block of paragraphs beneath that and at the very bottom was a space for a signature. Carefully, Jiro turned it over and looked at the back. There was nothing else on it.
"My mother told me to never sign things I didn't understand. Especially for strange men," he said politely and pushed the pen and paper back towards the Duty Officer.

"It's simple enough Mr. Jiro. It is a paper stating that anything said within this room is completely secret. That you will never mention anything spoken in this room to anyone, or if you do you will be tried for the crime of 'Treason against the State'. Also, you will never even admit to having been in this room. And," He put his hand down on the pen and paper and slid them back to Jiro, "You can't leave until you sign."

Jiro still didn't make a move. "Look," said the Duty Sergeant, "You're not signing a Faustian pact here. It's just to make sure you won't talk."
There was another moment of inactivity. Finally, Jiro took the pen and scrawled his name on the line. He handed it to the Duty Sergeant who put it back in the drawer. "Now that I've signed, do I get some kind of explanation?"

The Duty Sergeant sat a little further back in his chair, inhaled deeply, then began, "Although you know me as Duty Sergeant Nishiki, that is incorrect. I am actually Instructor Nishiki of the Defence Intelligence College, which is operated by the Defence Intelligence Centre, the DIC. The man sitting next to me, Mister Famanai although officially a member of the Communications & Signals Unit, is also a departmental administrator for the Internal Security Division of the Intelligence Services."

"You're spies?" asked Jiro.

"In the loosest sense of the word," the apparent Instructor said carefully, "I'll cut the crap, Mr. Jiro. I have no interest in wasting your time or mine, or my colleagues here or outside. For the last two weeks you have been the prize in an auction that has involved the three largest branches Juraian military. I believe at one point that a fourth, the Diplomatic Corp, offered a bid, but were quickly knocked out by Army Intelligence."
Jiro looked at them wide-eyed. "What have I done?"
"Oh, good Goddess, no, Mr. Jiro! You haven't done anything yet. It's what you could be that's got everyone so rattled. Well, you see, when you applied for the Royal Bodyguard, you were run through our computers in case of you being a terrorist or would-be assassin. I won't go into the exact details, mainly because I just ripped up all the notes I was given on you, but when your mental, physical and psychological examinations were checked over, it was found that you would prove a valuable asset to the military and intelligence services as a whole."

"I don't understand. What's valuable?"

This time Famanai sat forward, "Jiro. To put it bluntly, you couldn't make it into the Bodyguards. You're just too damn clever." He looked at Jiro's shocked face, "Yes, I know, a high IQ is a perquisite for entrance, but I think they'd be hard pressed to give you a suitable challenge. In fact, they didn't even bargain for you. The Army likes 'em clever, but without too many big ideas. That's you out. And in the Navy's eyes, your understanding of astro-physics is way below anything they want. Intelligence Bureau would take you on, but they've already recruited their bi-annual quota." He raised his hands in exasperation. "You're over qualified.
"Even their non-military intelligence branches had to give up. They all think you're useful, but they can't find an actual use. Oh, you're clever, you're fit, you've got common sense by the bucket load, but it doesn't negate the fact that their military and intelligence services have no real need for you."

Jiro's lips pursed. "So I'm useless. So what? What's the point of telling me this if I'm of no use to anyone?"

"We didn't say no use to anyone, Mr. Jiro. We said that those branches couldn't find a use for you. We can. We're here to offer you a choice. Walk out of the door, forget anything that was said, and you can go and get a normal job. I'm sure there are a million and one companies who'd jump at the chance to have you on their pay-roll. On the other hand, you can ask us what this job is, get involved and do what you came here to do."

"And what was that?"

"To protect King and Empire."

Jiro sat there, then turned and looked at the door. He looked back at the two men. "Why do you need me for this... thing?"

"Psych evaluation shows you have a certain moral flexibility. Usually we pick people from inside the services, Mr. Jiro. We've found you good enough without the necessary training."
"You want a spy..."
"Covert and clandestine operative, actually. But that's the gist."
"What for?"
"You ever read a spy novel?"
"Once or twice."
"I can't guarantee the thrills and spills of that.." Jiro looked at him. "But you serve your planet and you get a nice pension at the end of it."
"You think I want a nice pension?"
"No, you want to take a bullet meant for Royalty."
"And you worked that out from my psych profile," Jiro asked, "How?"
Nishiki shrugged absently. "We are the Intelligence Bureau."
Jiro thought about it, then nodded, "Alright, I'm in. Where do I sign?"

"I wouldn't worry about that," said the Instructor. He patted the desk drawer tenderly, "You've already signed the Oath and application."

* * * * *

There is very little that Seiji could have done that would have changed the situation he was now in.
Fate is a very curious thing. Of course, fate is more coincidental than destiny, which is plotted and formulaic. Fate weaves and changes as people engage in their own actions. Destiny simply is. So, his sitting on a transport ship, being ferried to a far distant planet that he had only a passing knowledge, was just one of those things that had to happen. A necessity.

At least that's what he thought. Fate. He let it toll in his mind. Fate. Fate, changer of men. It didn't make him feel better.
The sleep had proved refreshing, though his fitful waking had done little to calm his nerves and although the lights were still off and the other inhabitants of the ship still slept, he felt sick.

He got out of his seat, taking his hand luggage gym bag from the overhead rack and walked down to the business class toilet. The three other men in the cabin were sound asleep. The fat one was wearing a pair of hypno-phones to his ears, the cord plugged into the seat's communication screen. The screen was scrolling through lines of text and the only thing that could be easily read was the bold type title at the screen top, "Basic English : Hypnotic Course".
So the fat one's learning the language, thought Seiji. He carried on down the aisle, past two stewardesses, sleeping in their own little cubby-hole, and on into the toilet. It was cramped little room with a toilet and a counter with a sink and a mirror.
Putting the toilet cover down, he sat on it and hefted the hand luggage onto the cabinet that the washbasin was built into. He opened the gym bag and pulled out the two soft-back novels on top. He rested them on the floor, by his feet, and reached back in. Out came a pair of socks, trousers and shirt. Classic clothing for someone to change into after a three week, at least by Earth time, trip. His hand went back in and felt along the solid bag bottom. Eventually he found what he was looking for and flipped open the catch built into the bag's base. The entire bag was actually a sub-space portal generator, temperamental at times, but able to carry double his body weight in equipment without affecting its own mass.
The entire base of the bag swung downwards, a black hole. He reached in up to the elbow and took the wooden suitcase out of it. He rested that against the cabinet. Then he put his arm back in the kit bag and removed the second suitcase. He rested that against the first.

Personally, he didn't need half the stuff he had got here. The second paperback novel at his feet had two feet of mono-filament wire coiled in its spine, high tensile, tough and strong enough to cut through ten inches of tempered steel. He picked up the second suitcase he'd got out, rested it on his knees and opened it. The sniper rifle pieces stared up at him. Seiji took a bullet from its compartment and weighed it in his hand.
Heavy. He turned it over and looked at its base. There was a red dot. A hot-loaded magnum round. Two problems with that; For one, if it hit the target it'd make a mess like nothing he'd like to see. For two, it never would hit because its weight would activate shields, if the target had one.

And the target did have one. A very, very good one.

He collected the rest of magnum rounds and lined them up on the cabinet, before taking a bullet from the next compartment. Slightly smaller. He weighed it again then looked at the base. Frangible silver tip. He wasn't at a political rally, so he didn't need those. He held it up so the tip was at eye level. The aim of these was to enter the target, then fragment into splinters which didn't have enough kinetic energy to punch out the other side. Useful if you were going to hit a target making a speech and didn't want it going through and causing collateral damage, but he wasn't really caring about blow through here. Anyway, you could survive a frangible round if you missed something important and Seiji didn't want to put his money on a sniper shot. If they'd wanted a sniper-team, they wouldn't have sent him. He lined them up with the magnum shots and then looked at the final compartment. Gold tipped shield breakers. Very useful, if he actually had a sniper-team with him. He shook his head in frustration. What was the point of giving him a sniper rifle if you didn't give the correct ammunition? He took those out and put them with the rest on top of the cabinet.

The suitcase was dual leveled. On the top level was the rifle and the main bullet types, but underneath that was all the other equipment; wind speed monitors, scopes, heat sensors and secondary ammunition. He lifted the compartment and looked under it. No more bullet types. Therefore no need for a sniper rifle. He closed the suitcase and put it back in his hand luggage. Then he lifted the toilet seat, brushed the assortment of bullets into the pan and flushed. They disappeared, to be dumped out of an airlock and into space. He sat back down again and picked up the remaining suitcase.

Inside was a collection of passports, or 'shoes' as they were called in the trade. All fake, but perfect in every detail. Around them were the real equipment. Sniper rifles didn't even come close to these. He picked up the thin blade stiletto that had been taped into one of the base's compartments, and tapped its tip with his finger. It was razor sharp, so he put it back down, replacing the black tape that stopped it from rattling. He reached across for the second knife and then stopped.

Seiji looked at his finger, and at the single scarlet dot that welled there. He stared at it, watching the way it rose up from the surface from his finger like a bubble, the way it reflected the light. He raised it to his lips, and just as suddenly, he whitened. The hand dropped down to his knee, palm turned upwards, and he grabbed a piece of tissue from the dispenser with his other hand. Dabbing at the blood angrily, he stood back up and dropped the reddened paper down the toilet. Then he slammed the suitcase closed, pushed it back into the hand luggage and unlocked the toilet door. He walked back to his seat, still ashen faced and the stewardess, now awake, watched as he sat back down.

Even from the other end of the cabin she could see he was shaking like a leaf.

* * * * *

His finger didn't hurt. He'd watched it for a long time. The neat little hole drilled into its tip, but it still didn't hurt. Quietly, he squeezed the flesh on either side of the hole and watched the blood rise again. He looked at the way it ran down to his knuckle joint, and then he pressed the wound to lips. Kissed it. He closed his eyes and sat back.

Lips moved in silent words...

- - - - - - - -

Chapter 3:- Semper Fidelis

To be forever faithful is to always be a great person. Faithful to family, to friends, to lovers, to rulers. To ourselves.
The most important has yet to be decided.

- - - - - - - -

Disclaimer:- This is an act of fiction. All characters are owned by their respective companies (namely Pioneer and its affiliates). All characters, equipment and situations not owned by a company is the intellectual property of the author (Ministry Agent). Special thanks to Hospitaller for use of his Juraian Naval Intelligence Directorate. I promise I'll give it back in one piece.