Interlude I
"Death of Chivalry"
Ikitri'velus had been reared during his hatchling years in the rural countryside of the outback agri-world Alavish by a moderately wealthy family who loved him - his fathers, his mothers, his siblings and cousins and even his older brother's rock-grub Tiir, a family pet passed down through the years. They farmed for rare native bio-organic compounds in the alien air with collector-balloons and anti-grav lures. During the day they listened to the resonations of dark-matter waves with antiquated long-orbit scanning devices, watching as the thrumming limbs of the Taishibethi Sun fattened up their local star with dreaming thoughts. They sold the readings they gathered to a local Sun-Bishop. During the night they looked upon the lonely moon of their world, so pale and bright and beautiful, and Ikitri wondered why they were allowed to be out so late. No one else at his local school was permitted to do the same.
When she heard he'd been asking others about it, Ikitri's birth-mother took him aside the moment they returned home.
"These are family traditions," she reasoned to him, while he was still trying to shake off his hatchling down. "For us alone - not strangers."
"But... they aren't strangers. They're my friends."
Another of his mothers had scooped him up - so much more cheerful. He preferred the smiles to the frowns. "Oh, we know," she said, tapping the tip of his beak with a talon, "but this is our little secret, yes?"
To be trusted with a secret as a child was to be inducted into something special. Ikitri nodded quickly.
"No more telling others. Do you understand?"
Another nod.
"Good." She put him down and shooed him out of the dining room to play with Tiir and the other hatchlings.
It took him a little while to figure it out - the secrecy, the moon-watching, his family's aversion to watching official news broadcasts from Tai Prime on the holofeed, even the faint disregard his five parents had for the sun-readings they picked up from their orbital scanners.
His family were Refusalists.
It was almost inevitable that they would be found out. Sun Doctrine inferred that Refusalist conspirators were to be tried for treason and sentenced thusly - but Ikitri's family weren't Refusalists proper. They merely followed the faith - trying to catch a glimpse of the Shadow-Emperor's fractured soul on the surface of the moon, all the while turning their backs on the light of the Sun. The local authorities visited when word got out, the Sun Bishop renounced them, and they were effectively ostracized from Tai society from that moment on. Ikitri was quick to realize it was a bad situation to get caught in, offering him little prospects in life and the kind of branding that would force him to scrounge for every scrap of prosperity. The moment he turned fourteen years of age (maturity for his people), he packed his belongings and embraced Tiir one last time, then set out while his family were busy looking at the moon, praying to the long-dead Shadow-Emperor for a miracle. He made his way to the Alavishi city of Zen-Faas - and there he bartered for passage aboard a dinky old transport shuttle headed off-world.
It took him to the border-planet of Utopia-One.
The name, he soon learned, was satirical.
The planet was a utopia - but only for one, for whoever stood at the top as king of the lawless underworld infesting the lower industrial levels. The surface was inhospitable; fumes from the chem-factories had poisoned the atmosphere up top to deathly levels. Even the normally tolerant Uui were liable to drown in the toxins found above ground. He found work at a third-level bar called Heavy Thoughts, first as a server and then a bouncer when his muscles began to adapt to the harsher Utopia-One gravities - scouring the Alavishi weakness from his system. His presence alone was usually enough to dissuade trouble; beyond Myods, Taishibethi were among the largest of the Protectorate race and certainly the most able. The only real fight he found himself in any danger was with a drunken Meex patron, who managed to land a lucky paw swipe and tear out a couple of feathers.
The bruises he gave the lizard-ursine in return, though, were well worth the trouble.
There was no real government in Utopia-One. There was a garrison of Myod troopers, but they were understaffed and entirely incapable of keeping the masses in check, and the best they could manage was to patrol the first level, along with the second on occasion. They rarely made their way down to the third, and never to the fourth, fifth or sixth levels. Off-duty soldiers from abroad, though, had no such qualms, and they freely darted down in their obnoxiously loud bands to have themselves both a taste of the local 'cuisine' and a peek at the squalor Utopia's natives lived in.
It was always the soldiers who gave him the most trouble.
One day the local kingpin sent some enforcers to collect protection money, as was the local tradition, and the Heavy Thoughts' owner, an old Iurphin called Bhelos, had the funds all arranged in advance - but a visiting Marooner soldier took offence and tried to step in. Ikitri, stationed at the door, wasn't clear what had happened, just that there'd been some talking, then some shouting, then a brief scream and the blaring din of gunfire. He ran inside, found Bhelos dead, two Protectorate soldiers pinned through with Meex-built spike-throwers and three Eecharik gangsters riddled with beam-burns. The other patrons stampeded out, some of them bleeding and some of them scalded by beam-fire.
The Myods up top finally decided that that was reason enough to storm the third-level and arrest practically everyone they found in and around the bar.
Ikitri couldn't have been more relieved.
The local gangs were going to be furious, and he didn't want to be around when they decided to make an example of whoever was nearby. He'd seen enough desperate thieves crushed beneath Meex magna-mauls to know to avoid drawing their attention - and to get out of their way when they were on a warpath, no matter what.
The Myods tossed him inside an energy cell with two of the surviving Marooners, one drunk and the other muttering curses as he tended to a deep scratch running up his arm. Both were Taishibethi, and both carried themselves with all the carelessness and rough attitude of colony-born runaways.
"Alavish?" Ikitri asked.
The wounded Marooner gave him a curious look. The other snored.
"No," the wounded one said, "Orophenos."
Ah. Close enough.
"Not many Tai around here," the Marooner pointed out. "What are you doing, wasting your time in this cesspit?"
"Living," Ikitri retorted. "Or - I was. You've probably killed me."
"Why's that?"
"The Meex rule here. They might not be able to touch you, but they'll need a scapegoat all the same. The Eecharik'll find them one. I think it'll be me, as soon as I get out."
"Blind bears and bothersome bugs," the Marooner snorted. "You could leave, you know."
"With what money? They'll have raided my place by now."
"You can come with us. Sign up - the Protectorate takes in all sorts." The Marooner looked him over. "Even a rough bird like you could fit in."
"I'll pass."
He didn't pass.
When the surviving Marooners were shipped off back to the Star-Web, Ikitri went with them as far as Khanfall. He visited the famed cratered battleground-ruins were Kharad-Tan had supposedly been laid low, strolled through the burnt out husk of a Progenitor torchship on museum grounds, and had a look at the corpse of one of its crew - mummified within what had once been its armoured suit, a single heavy plasma burst nearby having warped the metal shell around the unfortunate creature into a blanket of molten steel. It was one of the reigning mysteries of the last seven thousand years, what the Progenitors looked like, and the only specimen they had to study was wrapped up in a cocoon of metal bearing properties that played hell on x-ray systems - and entirely prevented the Protectorate scientists from cracking it open to have a peek inside. It was tall, though, that was apparent enough. With long, slender limbs and a svelte frame. Ikitri could see it, just looking at the creature behind the glass. Something graceful and elegant; something larger than even he, serving a greater purpose than he could ever dream of.
To stave off galactic extinction.
To tear down an alien entity so hateful, so horrid, so cruel that it sought to end all life everywhere.
Had the dead soldier been at peace with itself? Had it seen its oncoming demise as a worthy sacrifice for the greater good? Or had they fought and fought and fought, even with themselves as the searing embrace of superheated metal soaked through their biosuit all around them?
The very idea of it inspired him so much that he marched straight to Khanfall's local Marooner garrison and camped outside the recruitment-officer's door for five Tai-standard days straight, until she eventually relented and permitted him to enlist.
After five years of training on Nimbus, the largest of three moons to orbit the Myod nursery-world Naarst (home to three thousand mature molluscs and nearly ninety billion larvae), Ikitri'velus was given a uniform, a pistol and a rank. The Marooner fleet gave him a posting aboard the diplomatic frigate Tomorrow's Hope, to guard and serve the Ferrelum ambassador Alemorodos. He was only given two standard months to acclimate himself before the frigate was deployed to the Kiiarn system - home to the embassy-world of Chivalry.
A new sapient species had been discovered some years earlier. Ameursh, they called themselves. Smaller than most Protectorate races, but numerous, intelligent, and they had the common bipedal body plan so many other successful species had - with two arms and two eyes to boot. They were amphibians, and hardy ones at that, and at a glance they seemingly lacked the social and technological sophistication that his own people had - but they came in peace. They weren't cutthroat Eecharik or brutal Meex; they were simply a people trying to discover themselves in the grand scheme of the universe. Their technology was functional, and though they had their spats of horrific civil wars according to the histories they presented, they were largely an idealistic species hoping for a better future.
It was hard not to appreciate them.
Chivalry was a border-world, like Utopia-One, but it was clean and well-looked after. It had been offered to the Ameursh as part of the Taishibethi Gift - presenting them with prime habitable worlds to help cultivate their society and further integrate them peacefully into the Protectorate. The planet was rich in resources and became home to Ameursh, Tai and Iurphin. It was during Ikitri's posting in orbit over Chivalry that the concurrent Queen-Dominant Interregnum, the internal and external political crisis occurring around the Eecharik nest-coalitions, came to a head.
In Eecharik politics there were two socio-political 'parties' among the leading Eecharik nest-mothers - the Traditionalists and the Neo-Revolutionists. The third Eecharik socio-political faction, the disparate bands that would become known as the 'outcasts' and 'exiles', were notably exempt from this on the basis that most of these runaway sub-mature Eecharik specimens turned their backs on all official monarchal-policies - preferring to keep their heads out of the bloody mess their ruthless society had spiralled into. The Traditionalists were self-explanatory; they were often of the older clades of nest-mothers, preferring their rigid and static isolationist approaches towards interstellar interactions. They had little interest in either leaving or pressing their cases within the Protectorate. The discovery of the Star-Web had ground Eecharik expansionary efforts to a halt, and while this chafed for a majority of the old queens, they were content with their lot.
The Neo-Revolutionists sprung out as a vividly hostile response the ideology of the Traditionalists. Eecharik queens ruled nests; they were eusocial creatures. When a queen hatched another queen, the younger of the two only had a finite amount of years to gather her own powerbase before being expelled to found her own nest. The static borders given to the Eecharik Dominion by the Protectorate actively strangled this process. Queens were notoriously ruthless when it came to protecting their own territories from rivals, and it wasn't unheard of for mothers and daughters to even kill each other in such instances. With little room left to them, the Neo-Revolutionists had to make do with dead worlds and asteroid belts - just to avoid filicide. The Star-Web loaned use of terraforming equipment and artificial orbital bodies as a sign of goodwill, but Eecharik queens were proud creatures - and they hated the very notion of charity, but they had no choice. There was nowhere for them to go. The Star-Web had them cornered against the edge of the galaxy, which the Eecharik superstitiously referred to as the Badlands. Some queens went out into the cold black only to die or to come back wrong, according to them. There was nothing for them out there.
The Queen-Dominant Interregnum came about when the previous High Queen of the Eecharik, a staunch Traditionalist who had seen the induction of her entire species into the Protectorate, had died under mysterious circumstances and left a power vacuum in her wake. Competition for the position was always fierce, but with the new political divide within Eecharik society, the barbarism reached all new levels. After a brief reign of terror employed against her Traditionalist rivals, the leader of the Neo-Revolutionist coalition - a nest-mother named Har'un'fae - took the position of High Queen by force. Her intent was clear from the get-go: to break free of the Star-Web's blockade and take as much territory as they wanted. The Traditionalists feared it would invite war. The Neo-Revolutionists simply didn't care.
They were desperate. They were hungry for more more more, and they were prepared to kill for it. The Ameursh, unfortunately, stood in the rare position of having their own feudal star-states bordering those of the frenzied Eecharik, and the Tai's Gift was the last straw for many Neo-Revolutionists. Har'un'fae led the charge.
Her first target: Chivalry. A two-fold effort - to promise the fledgling Ameursh kingdoms that there would be more violence to come, and to spurn the Taishibethi for their sheer audacity. Her fleet swept in, a wave of brutish warships of Eecharik making. In the past they were wont to use what the earlier Marooner fleets had referred to as 'flesh-ships', but the influence of the Star-Web had led the Eecharik into becoming an industrious lot - ripping all the metal they could out of their home planets to built grand cities and ships and orbitals. It seemed they'd also swung that development the way of their military arm.
Outlawed nuclear weapons were deployed within Chivalry's atmosphere, killing practically everything within the local hour. Har'un'fae wiped the board clean before setting her forces towards sweeping the radioactive waste aside and tunnelling out a nest for her own use. She sent a famed Eecharik Warrior named Yur'vol'ir to claim the planet's singular moon, blanketed over with a terraformed maple rainforest given to the Ameursh as a sign of goodwill from the Emperor herself. The Star-Web could only watch in horror as the massacre unfolded.
The battle came to a head in orbit, with every vessel both naval and commercial being drafted into the conflict by the Admiralty Board. News arrived that two entire Marooner battlefleets were being gathered to retaliate, led by the clutch-twin admirals Virutes and Oroses - infamous for their hardline approaches against Meex splinter-monarchies, usually anarchic youth groups hoping to earn glory in battle and led by princes who thought they were toughest in all the galaxy.
But they were still a couple of standard hours out.
Under orders of Alemorodos the Tomorrow's Hope blared out a signal of neutrality. It confused the Eecharik more than anything else - at least until Har'un'fae heard of it, and then she sent her people to kill them in person. Traditionally, there was no such thing as sanctuary or asylum or even personal safety among the Eecharik nests. All lived and died on the command of their nest-mother, and even their queens were constantly at risk of being killed by their peers. These terms were rather new to them as a species, alien words associated with the political-immunity the Protectorate offered Eecharik outlaws and refugees who abandoned the nests to live their own lives. Many of the Neo-Revolutionists, who suffered a greater rate of desertion among their nests due to the stresses of compressed living space, took immense offence to it. The response, then, really shouldn't have been as surprising as it was. Ikitri certainly thought so; he'd lived, however short a time, in the ghettos of Utopia-One, where cunning Eecharik and tyrannical Meex held the only real power, what with the Myods stranded on the upper levels. Meex were savage things, all jaws and claws and a bestial thirst for spilling blood, but honour was important to them.
The only thing Eecharik valued was respect - not honour. There was a marked difference between the two. Most of the bugs he'd met were cold to their cores. They were quick too, dangerous in a scuffle, be they Warriors or Workers. Ikitri couldn't imagine the immature Drone-morphs that made up most of the nest-armies would be any different.
Tomorrow's Hope's thrusters were shot out. Its weapon emplacements were slagged to molten scrap, and they were left to drift while the rest of the Eecharik snub-fighters flooded the local defense fleet. A shuttle came for them - like a pale white ovoid egg, the style of their aristocracy. It fired at the frigate as it approached, hitting life-support systems and blowing out extraneous compartments. Alemorodos and his Ferrelum aides were killed, their own personal life-support systems unable to keep up and shorting out. The sight of the Ferrelum perishing of asphyxiation and pressure-crushing was something Ikitri doubted he would ever forget.
The enemy made one major mistake, though. The Eecharik shuttle docked alongside them and began slicing into the frigate's hull. They wanted trophies. They wanted proof. It would have been safer for them to blow the Tomorrow's Hope out of orbit from a distance, but the aristocracy were as subject to the whims of pride as their arrogant nest-mothers.
And Alemorodos had, in his haste, failed to tell the Eecharik that he was not the only diplomat aboard.
The Tenerjiin were a private, quiet people. They rarely involved themselves in matters abroad. They liked to be left alone. That said, the Khargrive was no slouch when it came to politicking, and beyond ensuring his people would be largely left in peace, he was quick to greet every new member-state of the Star-Web in a succinct manner - to say We're here, we're alive, we're part of this, we see you, you see us, we know each other now, let's move on.
To that end, Crux had sent Narkasa to speak with the Ameursh - a Tenerjiin of some standing and more patience than most of her kind. The Ferrelum, always eager to ply their diplomatic talents, had offered to transport her aboard their own ship, perhaps to reinforce future connections with the elder race. Narkasa, though, had retreated to her assigned quarters the moment she'd boarded and remained there for the duration of their flight, right up until the Eecharik had pressed their attack on the system.
She was massive. Tall, slender, four-armed and six-eyed, with a whip-like tail and great sweeping horns splayed over her head, ranging back with her plate-like cranial crest. The very appearance of the Tenerjiin reminded Ikitri of a Taishibeth having lost their feathers, with their vestigial wings evolving into an extra pair of arms and hands. No beak, no apparent jaws at all when she refrained from speaking, and there was an uneasy aura about her. Ikitri couldn't accurately place it, but he felt an immense discomfort in her presence. As if he didn't belong; that he, a thing of life, was juxtaposed on a conceptual level to this icon of death.
The only ones in the bridge who kept from flinching and fidgeting in Narkasa's presence was the sole Verunlix navigator aboard and the bridge commander - Prophecy Eleven-Two and Captain Jehennes. Both were quick to respond to the latest Eecharik tact.
"Prepare to counter-board," Jehennes ordered.
A skeleton crew was left behind as every able-bodied Marooner was armed and suited up, and dragged all the way to the portside airlock where the Eecharik were sawing their way in with plasma-cutters. Not like they were needed. Narkasa stalked past, dragging two scimitars seemingly carved straight from volcanic glass, and the moment the Eecharik broke through and their Drones scrabbled inside she was on them. Black-and-green ichor flew. Ikitri, as with most others present, fired past her at the Eecharik Workers outside, taking aim.
Artificial gravity failed. All Marooners capable of doing so activated the magnetic locks on their boots and shuffled forth. Narkasa did no such thing, lunging from the walls at each bug in her way and cleanly eviscerating them. She carved them a path into the Eecharik egg-ship, where they broke into every chamber they came across and burned the insects out. Some of the rooms even had birth-machines - half-living constructs used by the nest-mothers to replenish their Drone ranks, laying entire batches of eggs and filling up the ship-borne nurseries. Those they ignored.
The aristocrat in command they found already dead; Narkasa had beaten the Marooners to the egg-ship's bridge. They swept the corridors of the vessel for more hostiles, but every single bug had been killed by then.
"Get everyone over," Jehennes panted. An Eecharik's mandibles had found its way into the captain's shoulder during their charge. His foldblade sizzled with evaporating blood. "Now!"
The Protectorate's contingency for the hostile take-over of an inhabited world was to wait for negotiations to proceed, in hopes of ensuring the survival of the local population. Given that Har'un'fae had bombed Chivalry to oblivion, that was no longer possible. The next contingency Ikitri could recall, wherein it involved the hostile take-over of a non-habitable world, negotiations were still the go-to. Always diplomacy; the Star-Web was meant to be a place of peace and inter-species cooperation. There was nothing in the Marooner academy rulebooks about their present scenario. Oh, they'd drilled to combat all sorts, Eecharik included, but not on this scale. Pirates - yes. What may as well have been the entire might of the Eecharik Dominion? No.
Jehennes didn't like that.
The captain was apparently a maverick where Protectorate contingencies were concerned, because he'd up and decided they were going to end the war before it could even begin. Both Prophecy and Narkasa were in accord. It didn't leave the rest of them much choice. The plan was… feasible, anyways. As long as the Star-Web followed the Exclusionary Contingency.
In the case of an insurgent force claiming a valuable military target, the Star-Web's first action was to release the native star from the rest of the Sun's Web entirely. The star would cool, lose the extra ethereal heat and energy offered to it by the wider Web. Chivalry would be plunged into a brief, minor ice-age. The Eecharik Drones, not quite sentient like their elder morphs, would instinctively burrow down into the world's crust to hibernate during this period, while the Workers began setting up heaters to last them through. The ships above in orbit were free to continue as they pleased. All it would do would ground-lock most of the nest-forces already planet-side.
Jehennes' plan was to hit Chivalry while this temperature-drop was occurring, storm the new nest and seize the errant queen - hold her hostage until it all blew over. There was still an army in the way, and the entire matter of running against the Eecharik fleet and hitting the problem of rapid atmospheric entry to escape the fighters sure to pursue.
Which was why they were taking the Eecharik egg-ship to do just that.
Beyond the initial confusion that was sure to last them only a couple of minutes longer at best, the Eecharik aristocrat vessels came with one key function - a pressurized command centre, so that no matter what the local commander and his aides would survive even a plummet into a planet's gravity well, hit an ocean straight on and sink right to the bottom of the deepest sea-trench. It was geared to survive pressure and heat in equal parts, with some life-support systems built in to last them a couple of days. The Marooners didn't need days, so...
They dropped.
The egg-ship hit the ground hard, its outer shell having melted away, and it hopped like a stone tossed across the surface of a lake. Not far from the rising mound where Har'un'fae was setting up her new nest either, give or take a couple of hundred standard-miles. All they needed was to hit a root-tunnel and storm the nest from there.
The Marooners stormed out of the airlock, tossed down a shield generator (not early soon enough; two Tai were needled through their necks with millimetre-wide death beams straight from orbit) and dropped a seismic detector. Eechark nests were like trees, with massive root networks stretching in every direction. They found their tunnel some ways down, and lanced right through to it with a plasma charge - burning a glass hole large enough to fit an entire Excubitor company. Heavier fusion bolts hit them from above, scoring sparkling grooves three arm-lengths wide in the rocky earth around them. The light of beam-fire was blinding; the entire planet had been cast into a quick nuclear winter anyways, Exclusionary Contingency be damned. The ashes of three billion dead were still raining down.
They slow-dropped down into the deserted root-tunnel near the base of the world's crust, armed to the beak, and followed the words of Prophecy Eleven-Two into the dark.
They marched for three standard days. The Drones harmlessly scuttled past them en masse, confirming their hopes that the Exclusionary Contingency would go ahead, but the Workers and Warriors made them bleed for every step taken. Without the Drones to rely on overwhelming them with sheer numbers, the Eecharik turned to vicious tactics of guerrilla warfare. They gave no sign before they struck, shooting at them from the gloom with flash-muzzled solid projectile weapons. Some Marooners were even dragged yelling off into the shadows their helm's night vision and infrared couldn't parse through, snatched by the claws of hungry Warriors.
Ikitri was wounded twice - the first when a Warrior slashed out one of his eyes with a jagged piece of broken armour while he was in the midst of tearing its head off, and the second when a Worker put a slug-round in his gut. The others dragged him along, Narkasa covering them, and they delved further and further into the nest. Only Prophecy's whispers gave them any sense of direction. Had they been alone, it was likely they would have wandered for weeks on end until they eventually died of thirst.
At last, they entered the nest proper - and broke out into one final, desperate run to storm through and reach the throne-room. Narkasa was their vanguard, untouchable and merciless. She cut them a path through, cracked open the doors to the final chamber with her shoulder and slammed it shut behind them, digging one of her swords into the floor to brace against it, just as the desperate Warriors came pounding on the other side.
The queen's guards opened fire, only momentarily dazed by their sheer audacity, and more than half of what remained were picked off. Even Prophecy was hit, their glass orb partially fracturing. The damage was done, though - and when Narkasa turned to see to them, it was as good as over. Everything save Har'un'fae was put to the blade or shot to bits, and then they did some surgical amputation on the queen to keep her from lashing out at them. She screamed all the while, spitting vile curses until Narkasa knocked her about the head hard enough to put her in a coma.
After that they settled in for a siege.
It was the first time Ikitri had tasted Eecharik flesh, forced to butcher the remains of the guards when their rations ran out.
He wouldn't have recommended it. The bugs were foul.
It took three standard days, four in Chivalry time, for the Star-Web to kill everything in orbit. They even set the Alluvion Understanding onto the Eecharik stationed on Chivalry's moon, letting the swarms of ticks assimilate every Eecharik soldier found there into their macabre collection of flesh-hosts. Still, though - it forced an immediate ceasefire afterwards. Without their High Queen to prompt them to further acts of savagery and genocide, the Eecharik stood down and awaited the repercussions sure to follow. The young Emperor was furious. As Ikitri heard it told later on, the only reason she'd abstained from returning the favour was the plea for restraint from, of all things, an Eecharik outcast.
Har'un'fae's nest was burned inside-out in retaliation, and that was that. He and the rest of Jehennes' remaining crew were airlifted out and rushed through the Raven Bridge to Tai Prime for emergency surgeries, while the captain was himself summoned by the Admiralty Board. Ikitri wasn't sure whether they wanted to praise the Marooner for his bravery or crucify him for his recklessness. He wasn't so sure what he wanted either. Both sounded good to him.
Ikitri was permitted to take some leave from the Med-Centre station and Marooner service for a little while. The pain in his gut had only subsided some; one of the doctors had informed him that a couple of tiny shards left by the slug were in too deep, having pierced the lining of his lower intestine, and that the operation to remove them was almost more dangerous than it was worth. It was quite possible that he would be left with the little reminders for the rest of his life - as if the new eye wasn't enough.
Still, the chance to visit the Imperial City, Khidai-Viis itself, was almost worth the pain. The capital was... incredible. Ikitri fell in love not even a day into his stay; he adored the cleanliness of it all, the peace, the smells, the sights, the people. He visited one of the major Sun Temples, spoke with a Bishop and prayed for the first time in his life.
It satisfied something inside him - something searching for a higher purpose.
He felt happy knowing he'd made the right choice in life.
The Chivalry Incident was finally ended with Har'un'fae's execution. The Emperor went on live broadcast, condemning the massacre and the Neo-Revolutionists both, even those not responsible for the fledgling crusade. If the Eecharik had only requested more territory, she'd said, then the Star-Web would have given it to them. As it was, the expulsion of the Eecharik Dominion was being considered by the Star-Court, along with a look into the morality of allowing the socio-political nest-system that displaced so many objectors and refugees to persist.
It took a few standard months, but the Eecharik managed to declare a new High Queen without further bloodshed - except she wasn't a High Queen. The nest-mother Iix'ii'xii, apparently a compromise between the Traditionalist and Neo-Revolutionists for her mixed political views, made her first act to visit Tai Prime, kneel before the Emperor and the Ameursh Basileus and beg for forgiveness on her people's behalf. With trillions watching, both reluctantly gave it.
Her second plea was to petition for more breeding grounds for the Eecharik, that they were in dire need of it to fund the reparations they were ordered to make towards the Ameursh Feudal-States.
Territory was given.
The third plea was to allow the Dominion to remain a part of the Protectorate Star-Web, under the conditions that the normally religiously-redundant Eecharik would adopt the Sun-faith and she would swear the office of High Queen into vassalhood to the Imperial Throne directly.
Thus did the High Queen become the Marquess-Potentate. Thus ended the Chivalry Incident - though there was still some controversy where the Eecharik and Ameursh were concerned for thousands of standard years to come.
Ikitri didn't know what happened to most of the others involved in seizing Har'un'fae. Some had been honourably discharged by their volition, he would later learn, while others sought less exciting postings. Narkasa had all but disappeared - having returned to Crux to give her report to the Khargrive. Prophecy Eleven-Two had died, in so far as Verunlix could die. The shadow-creature within was left disembodied and without the means to interact with realspace, so for all intents and purposes they were dead.
Ikitri himself remained in Jehennes' command after the Board was through with him.
He saw little reason to leave.
AN: Thanks to Nomad Blue for editing!
This is my little guilty pleasure, it was so much fun to write.