Chapter Three
Pride
The interlude hadn't taken long and when they've showered and resumed their black uniforms and accouterments each inspects the other for signs of their distraction, but when Kensi goes to and unlocks the gym door Nell makes a final detailed inspection in the mirror by the door.
"What, don't you trust me?" Kensi quips.
"Always, but with Lange you can't be too careful." She's noticed that the gold band fronting Kensi's cover between metal shield device and short visor doesn't gleam as hers would if she had one instead of the silver band Twos and Threes use.
She eyes the five golden strips that slice the taller woman's shoulder boards, longs again for them upon her own shoulders, but it's Kensi's words that grip her attention.
"Damn right. Come on before we're really late."
"We?"
"She wants to see me too, and I have this feeling she didn't mean separately."
"Then let's not keep her."
x
And so they do not, but as they approach the steel doors downstairs, the ones with the polychrome on gold INCIS shield replica on the left door and the larger sword through Earth Imperial Standard on the right, Nell concentrates on keeping from her face that Lange's armed and armored Bodyguard stands at attention outside. The man's military bearing, from short cropped hair under mirror polished black adamantium helmet to body armor proof against any projectile to equally polished boots are as stiff as he usually is.
"Hi." Kensi greets the man casually but his only concession to formal attention is a slight turning of his head so he meets her eyes.
"Ma'am," is polite but he doesn't salute either of them, for that would entail using his right hand. When on duty, and many times when off, if not armed with the dreadful rifle he carries across his chest, finger always at the trigger, his right hand never strays from the butt of the pistol at his belt.
The only time he'd focused on Nell was on their initial approach and his attention was on her gun in left holster, her dagger in the right thigh sheath with hilt at hand level and, less so, on the line of pointed silver shells on the wide black belt over the dagger. Now he attends upon the taller, gold highlighted Level One Inquisitor.
He is as precise in his manner as he is merciless in the performance of his duty. Hard, remorseless, stoic, bereft of conscience or mercy, none of the tender emotions ever penetrate his armor. Henrietta Lange has but to say 'kill him' or 'kill her' and that person, be it enemy or lover, is immediately dead.
The space black armor emphasizes his dark alienation from humanity and typifies the remorseless, humorless, inflexible personality of Martin Deeks.
"Deeks," Kensi says, her manner playful, "am I ever going to get a smile out of you?"
He stares into her eyes, his expression the empty one he uses when he kills. "I am smiling, ma'am."
"Of course you are."
He reaches back to turn the knob on the right door with the Imperial sigil and to break the seal so the door slips an inch open. It's unnecessary, as if to say 'get in and shut up'.
x
Inside the mahogany and book lined room Chief Inquisitor Lange, seated behind her desk, is taller than she would be when standing, this aided by the elevated platform in the rear portion of the room combined with a six inch higher than common desk and corresponding chair and footrest. If someone were to seat himself in the single seat before that desk, that person is on the main floor level and consequently must look up to meet Lange's eyes.
Were someone to dare to inquire, she might say the arrangement is so she may meet her visitors without having to crane her neck. Nell doubts she knows anyone in INCIS so foolhardy as to ask.
The seat is a rare honor accorded to high ranking visitors. In her seven years here, Nell has never been invited to use it, not that with her stature and the twelve inch artificial enhancement the Chief has to look up at her anyway. In fact, she doubts that any L1 uses it with any regularity with the possible exception of Lead Inquisitor Grisha Alexandrovich Callen.
As in all things, there are ranks and there are ranks.
As the door swings shut behind them the women snap to attention, their salutes textbook perfect, the punches precise and synchronized. "Inquisitors L1 Kensi Blye and L2 Nell Jones report to the Chief Inquisitor, by Command," Kensi announces.
"Come here."
x
Lange shifts her gaze to Nell, her first look at her since Operations. "Compliments on the Duchane matter."
"Thank you, Chief Inquisitor."
"I would have been happier to have independent corroboration of his guilt before he'd been dispatched."
"Noted." She will no more offer explanations than she would apologize. Her report had been detailed and complete and apologies are never acceptable. An Inquisitor is either efficient enough to succeed or pays the penalty for failure, so to do more is inefficient and superfluous.
"Inquisitors Callen and Hanna have found sufficient evidence of Duchane's guilt."
The doors across the room open and the Inquisitors, on the expression of their Chief that the interruption is not expected, whirl with their silver weapons leading.
Nell sees through her side vision that Lange, still seated behind the armored desk, also covers the door with her own weapon.
The two doors are open wide and two men in black armor identical to Deeks' snap to Attention inward on either side of them, their weapons held to their chests in salute. Though they neither move nor speak, their attitudes say explicitly that the women had better re-holster their weapons.
Now.
Their weapons are, like Deeks', Tracker Smart Rifles. They contain computer targeting systems that identify a target and program the bullet's trajectory. Once locked on a target, the bullet unerringly finds it.
At first glimpse of the man who strides through the door both women rapidly transfer their weapons to left hands and they peripherally see Henrietta Lange reholster her weapon and rise. The three women execute precise salutes which the man does not return as he advances to the desk. Blye and Jones move far enough to each side and stand at attention bookending the official, their pistols transferred back to right hands and held to their chests in precise armed salute.
The man between them is tall with close cropped hair and square face chiseled in living stone. His uniform is similar to Lange's except for the braided gold rather than bars thick at epaulets and wrists, but the wide and gleaming bands on his wrists are split around into two rather than the wide solid band worn by Grand Inquisitor Lee Gibbs.
The four rows of medal pins on his chest show an impressive range of accomplishment and honors.
He returns the salute toward Lange, allowing Blye and Jones to reholster and the three to come down to Attention, yet his slow gesture had the definite air of a punch.
x
It is said that the mind imprints itself upon the face and, like the well known portrait of INCIS' Grand Inquisitor, this is not a face made for smiling.
Rather the steel and flint eyes are narrow, a look as set in as the vertical frown creases between those eyes. The rectangular stone face announces a man who has kept his temper tight for so long that his visage will ease in neither sleep nor death.
The impression Deputy Grand Inquisitor Dwayne Cassius Pride perpetually presents is that life has never been kind to him and he will exact his revenge.
x
"Deputy Grand Inquisitor," Lange, still at Attention, greets him formally. "I had not expected you until morning." The carefully modulated tone is one of observation; by no means can it be construed as reproval.
"This is important." His voice, like face and body, is granite.
"Of course." Her tone conveys that nothing out of the ordinary has taken place.
Uninvited, Pride seats himself in the only chair, a moment later glancing forward, right and left at the three women. "At ease."
Their shift from one formal posture to the other, left foot planted 14 inches to the side, hands crossed right over left before them, is in proper unison. Pride looks to Lange from crown to waist, the rest hidden by the desk, to the L1 at his left, to the L2 at his right, examines them minutely for nearly a minute until he gets to "As you were."
Lange reseats herself, Blye and Jones remain facing him rather than their Chief, attentive without being at Attention. "May I present Inquisitors One Kensi Blye and Two Nell Jones." It is distinctly not a question, a fine point of protocol and Pride acknowledges them with brief nods. "I was about to give them their assignments."
"I have them," he declares and displays the data rod in his previously closed fist. "Your current Operation is postponed."
"Yes, sir."
x
"Two days ago Top Secret Military Files were stolen from Georgia." Pride's words are intense, sharp enough to draw blood. "We caught some of the spies, but several committed suicide before they could be interrogated."
Nell sees without moving more than her eyes, head toward Kensi, that her Chief has many questions but no one in any way wise interrupts the Deputy Grand.
"One spy got away. He's been traced here."
With that declaration Pride stops and Lange risks an inquiry. "Do we know who the spies work for?" There's a suitably short list of countries not yet crushed, which the Emperor allows a measure of autonomy so long as they swear fealty to the Empire and obey Imperial Orders.
That is, until the Emperor gets around to crushing them.
"France."
"And our part?" She won't ask why they have a part or why he and not Owen Granger is here to give them this assignment.
"You have a very definite role to play."
"And that is?"
Pride stands, a sudden movement. "We'll cover the rest in your Operations."
xx
When Henrietta Lange leads Pride, Blye and Jones past the two guards bookending the door she glares up at Deeks, assuring him by that look that he will very soon pay the price for his allowing the unannounced entry of the Deputy. He could hardly keep him out, lacking a specific order to do so; it is the failure to announce that he will pay for. She hopes he had been ordered to do so, for though he is usually a very satisfactory Personal Guard, he shall pay with either a pound of flesh or with his life.
But as they cross the corridor out to the stairs leading upward, two men enter through the main door.
Callen, the shorter of the two, is Lead Inquisitor, first among the four, a role he carries with all due gravity. His gold accented uniform shows evidence that he'd been wearing it all day and by his mien that he'd been looking forward to getting out of it long before this. The taller black man beside him has already removed his black cover, his black hair announcing the need for an overdue trim, yet he yanks the cover back on as they halt, snap to attention and salute the Deputy Grand Inquisitor.
"Come with us," is Pride's greeting and the female Field Inquisitors hold a step back as Callen and Hanna insert themselves directly behind Pride and Lange. The three bodyguards take up the end.
x
The steel door yields to Lange's retinal scan. Though the door weighs more than three hundred pounds, it is so balanced that a single hand can move it should power to the maglock fail and the thick manual bolts not be engaged.
Nell sees past Hanna's huge back Eric Beale leap to his feet and execute a precise salute, that the marks of her nails have scabbed over above his closed jacket, yet the caution in his eyes is aimed more to her than to the man whose iron fist grips a quarter of the country.
Pride returns the gesture as he strides into the bright chamber and hands Beale the data rod. "Put this information on the main screen."
"Yes, sir."
When Pride turns to Lange and her four Inquisitors, his voice is as intense as his eyes are hard. "The issue is Espionage," he declares for the benefit of Callen and Hanna. "Someone aboard the Battleship INS Prometheus is part on a Conspiracy to Steal Military Secrets." The capitals come like physical blows, the phrases imbued with an intensity that might cut if directed at any of them. "The Prometheus is to meet with the Ninth Fleet off Australia, but the information is Top Secret. The Admiralty cannot risk it being known to exist, let alone to have been Copied." The copying of the unidentified files seems to be a personal affront.
On the huge screen before them appears an image of what used to be three once white uniformed sailors whose bodies and attire show the full effects of Imperial Inquisition. "These three refused to reveal their plot and, unfortunately, the Interrogators grew overzealous in their questioning." Here Pride becomes even more emphatic. "They have been disciplined for their failure." The image of the four black uniformed Interrogators is even more hideous than that of their charges. Granted such men are of a lower order, equivalent to common soldiers against the elite Inquisitors, but the fellowship still plays hard on those who must contemplate it.
Pride leaves the image up to sear their minds. "All we do know is that the information was smuggled out of Georgia and into the hands of a French agent. We do not know the identity of the agent, though we are certain he is aboard the Prometheus. It's the only ship due to depart tomorrow from Naval Base Archer." An image of the Battleship docked at an unnamed port is a mercy, as it clears the lesson for failing Pride from the screen.
"Normally we would seize and search the ship, but we can reveal neither the information's existence nor its loss.
"The Prometheus will deploy tomorrow at 0800. You two," he glares at Callen and Hanna, his tone like a sword thrust, "will board the ship in your own personae and find it. Reveal nothing about your assignment, not even to the Shipboard Inquisitor."
"Yes, sir," Callen, as senior, acknowledges for the team.
"And since this Unit specializes in Covert Operations you two," he shifts that intense scowl to Blye and Jones, "will join the ship as new Petite Officers." No one is foolish enough to mention the irony that that ancient rank is borrowed from their former best allies in their war against the American aborigines.
Pride pulls from his jacket pocket two data rods and pushes them into the women's hands. "Memorize your personae."
"Yes, sir," Kensi says.
Jones' input is not requested.
"Understand that the spy is to be captured Alive. With the loss of his co-conspirators, he is the sole source of information. We Must know what was stolen and for whom it is intended. It's probable the next link in the chain is Australia. Though it's part of the Empire," he announces in an 'of course' tone; there's little left on Earth that is not Imperial domain, "the continent was originally a French Political Penal colony up to 73 years ago. There's still a strong pro-France leaning among the people that is yet to be eradicated."
ooo
France has never properly forgotten its glory days some two hundred years ago when it had been an empire in its own right. While the early American Empire under the first Emperor George Washington was flexing its collective muscles, Emperor Lucien Bonaparte, having ousted his militarily savvy but politically inept brother Napoleon, had expanded his domain to take on its island neighbors even before touching Spain, hitting that larger territory from both sides. More and more of the rich African Continent, India and many of the territories to the east then fell like dominoes while America took in more and more of the territories of the red skinned aborigines, from the Atlantic to Pacific oceans. It cut the north off from the tremendous territory to the south, a continent in its own right, and conquered each in turn. It then conquered all of the Pacific islands which territories fell with pathetic ease, establishing dominion over everything from the Arctic to the Antarctic continents before turning its attention further westward.
A hundred seventy years after its establishment under Emperor Washington, the American Empire ultimately took on the fancifully named Empire of the Sun. Ultra-long range bombers, launched from a base on the former Hawaiian Kingdom's island of Oahu, scored a devastating victory.
While Japan's Emperor Hirohito and his people were distracted by their seemingly interminable bickering with the latest (and last) of the Chin dynasties, seven aircraft launched from Pearl Harbor, ignored for the moment the French colony island of Australia and flew further west. While Hirohito and his Generals and Admirals were looking west at Chin, the bombers came up behind them and on August 6, 1945 dropped fourteen of the fruits of American Empire Ingenuity. Tokyo, Nagasaki, Yokohama, Hiroshima, Yokosuka, Nagoya and Kobe all disappeared into virtually simultaneous atomic clouds. Japan fell before it learned that it was threatened.
Not to leave a job half done, the planes continued westward and the people of Beijing, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shanghi, Chongqing, Hangzhou and Wuhan were greeted by their ancestors.
Before radiation levels dropped off enough to attend to the rebuilding of those cities, Imperial forces set to work establishing their expanded dominion. But first the Empire had to contend with an unexpected development. Much to the surprise of the Empire what was left of Japan, rather than being completely cowed into submission by the awesome nuclear might of its unexpected enemy, adopted a collective 'Victory or Death' mentality.
x
It was a move that quite defied American logic, for the country was in no position to launch a counterattack and never would be. While swallowing up Korea, Vietnam and the other small leftovers, Imperial forces were harried by Japanese survivors whose efforts amounted to little more than pinpricks.
But there comes a time when a foe, pricked often enough, slaps back and it was Emperor Joseph McCarthy who finally raised the hand. Since in 'Victory or Death' Japanese victory was impossible, he gave them death.
Through two months of 1947 all Japanese males, from fetus to old men in hospices, wherever located throughout the Empire, were systematically hunted down and slaughtered. Females, having their uses, were permitted to live. Over the decades mixed blood men - and female replacements generation by generation - were conceived, born and grew to age to repopulate the islands.
But the pure blooded Japanese race is extinct.
x
In the meantime America, strong in its dominance of the Western Hemisphere and of the land as far as the western border of Chin, turned its attention to the ever contending Empires of France and Israel.
Between them these two Dictatorships, a Theocratic one dating back thousands of years to their King Saul the Terrible and the two century old dynastic Bonaparte Empire, following the traditional war policy of 'Conquer or Obliterate', had brought everything from Ireland to the border between the five 'Stans' on the western border of America's Chin and from the European Hegemony's northern border through the African continent under their ever contending controls. The standard, of course, being to use all military resources of arms and personnel to fight in later battles, each became larger and more powerful with every battle to where they essentially won upon arrival, vastly outnumbered and outgunned forces wisely surrendering on sight to be incorporated into the whole. Ultimately all lands in the former Europe owed fealty to either Israel or France.
Open hostility between these two superpowers broke out in 1997 and while the American Empire sat back and watched, Israel and France and their various territories pounded one another while America, with all existing resources of every other conquered nation, built up and reinforced their might. Then, on September 11 of 2001, when Israel and France were left like two punch drunk prizefighters staggering dazed about the ring, America strolled in and smashed both to the mat.
x
But while victorious, America had its hands full with half the planet already under its dominance and was not yet ready to assume full control of the globe, and so Emperor John Anderson, who had succeeded to the throne years before when his contenders Ronald Reagan and James Carter, following the assassination of Gerald Ford, both inexplicably dropped from sight within two days of one another, made his famous decision. If Israel and France swore eternal fealty to THE Empire, today controlled by Emperor Todd Akin, and maintained the Pax Imperium, they could keep their territories intact and squabble as they liked in any way short of open war. To ensure this, everything long of a cap pistol was confiscated, forcing each to rebuild - if they could. Anderson divvied up the land, did some rearranging of holdings just to show that he could, then left the two vassal fiefdoms to carry on until the day would come when he or his successor would smash them.
It was not a perfect solution by any means. Each side, stinging at the arbitrary rearrangements of their borders and holdings and unable to give up the battles of centuries, continues to stab at the other with newly built weapons while also trying to curry favor with the Empire while plotting with covert methods how to take down the big wolf and rule in its place.
In fact, the sole thing holding France and Israel back from taking aggressive action now are the facts that they cannot yet mount a successful thrust against America and a failure will certainly result in the atomic carpet bombing of that country, creating deep lakes filled in by the Atlantic or the Mediterranean.
ooo
"France must not get the information their agents stole," Pride bites. "You four are to retrieve it and the agent and return both to this building Undamaged. I want him interrogated Properly." He signals the end of the briefing with a fist to his chest and a hard punch forward. "Long Live the Empire."
"LONG LIVE THE EMPIRE!"
/*/*/*/*/
A/N: Since Scott Bakula is the only NCIS actor ever to portray an Imperial Officer (Star Trek: Enterprise 4:18 & 19), I simply pulled his appearance and manner directly from Cmdr. Jonathan Archer.