PART TWO: MOLZHURE

Chapter 2-1

Molzhure was a temperate and pleasant planet with two continents, two communities, and two serious but completely different problems. Eight hundred years before the war it had been settled in a joint Batarian-Turian venture. The Batarian and Turian colonists hadn't really liked talking to each other all that much, but that was alright, because the Batarian yangban had settled the western continent of Taraga while the Turian dissidents settled the eastern continent of New Celanur, and they hadn't had to talk to each other all that much. Now Molzhure's Batarian yangban were showing themselves to be sectionalist, Bassavist, and generally disloyal to the Covenant, which was an unfortunate but routine problem. Molzhure's Turians remained outwardly loyal to the Covenant, but a growing number were joining a heretical antecedent cult. This was more exceptional, and a problem best dealt with before it could metastasize.

This was twenty years after the start of the war and five years after my assignment on Narsompasi. The war had begun to go badly for the Covenant. The battlefronts had stagnated, but the changes behind the battlefronts all seemed to be against us. The Illuminated Primacy started to get its act together, and Colonel Bassavi rose to power on Khar'shan and pledged the homeworld Batarians to die in the defense of their own enemies. But these were less urgent problems than the sudden and bizarre threat of the Martolla Compact. Within the Terminus Exarchate an Unggoy mutiny led by Deacon Babvus Babquit had erupted on the mining colony of Martolla. The nearby gendarmes paid a Krogan mercenary company led by Warlord Dardoll Mellet to go to Martolla and put the mutiny down. The situation escalated dramatically when the Krogan mercenaries defected to the Unggoy mutineers.

No one saw that coming. Everyone had expected the Krogan clans to continue fighting opportunistically, in a style where they largely ended up fighting each other and contributing nothing to the war in either direction. Dardoll Mellet changed that. Together with Babvus Babquit, he proclaimed the Martolla Compact, an alliance of all races dedicated to the self-rule of the Terminus Systems. In theory this was almost a neutral development, or I suppose a neutrally bad development. The Martollans cited the Genophage as a grievance almost as much as they did the glassing of Balaho, and regularly warned against the Citadel Council's "imperialism of the soft and treacherous kind." In practice, of course, it was only the Covenant that was in fact occupying the Terminus Systems with alien armies, and so the Martollan Compact only actually fought the Covenant.

Terminus Krogan flocked to join the Martollan Warpath, gendarmerie forces in the area were paralyzed by Unggoy conscript attacks on their own officers, and the Martollans had some modest success recruiting from third races. Veterans of the Krogan Rebellions planned and executed the conquest of worlds. I never saw much of this in person. The Martollan Warpath was a job for the Jiralhanae gendarmes, who never got to see the Coreward Front but did at last have an enemy that would stand and fight them on even terms. But with worlds across the Terminus Systems now abandoned by the Jiralhanae, it was left to the Anuranite Lustration to stifle all pettier and stranger forms of deviance ourselves.

Hence, I was on Molzhure, a planet with no Krogan, Unggoy, or now Jiralhanae to speak of.

Ruz and I were met at the spaceport by one female Turian in crimson gendarmerie armor and one Mgalekgolo. The Turian's face was tattooed red and black, the colors of Old Celanur. The Mgalekgolo, interestingly enough, had Celanurian heraldry of similar color and pattern painted onto its shield. I wondered where the Mgalekgolo's bondmate was. "Hey!" The Turian called to me. "Qelet B'Norai? Anuranite Lustration? First Sergeant Nravian. Good to meet you."

"First Sergeant?"

I felt that I was important enough I should be met by somebody more important than that. Nravian looked insulted. "First Sergeant is all you're getting. Three years ago, the Jiralhanae decided our officers were conspiring against them, which probably wasn't even true. Killed everybody lieutenant and above. Then the Jiralhanae all flew off to fight the Warpath. Grisly thing. Still makes me angry to think about. It has been an NCOs' paradise since, though."

"You're serious?"

"I might as well tell you straight. Ever since the Jiralhanae left, things have been a mess here, worse than normal. Erdans and Bassavists are the least of it."

"Erdans?"

Nravian scowled in irritation. "Getting you up to speed might take longer than I thought. The cult! It's the Cult of Erde-Tyrene. We call them the Erdans. You're here to deal with the Erdans and the Bassavists, right?"

"Right."

"Good." She eyed me suspiciously. "The Bassavist yangban. You're not one of them, are you? A yangban?"

"No."

"Slave? Excuse me. Freedman?"

"No! No, my family is cartel-kin."

"Good enough." She suddenly looked much friendlier. "Come on. We need to get moving. Something came up just as you were disembarking." She set off for a waiting Spirit dropship. The Mgalekgolo, its bondmate still nowhere to be seen, followed her. After a moment, so did Ruz and I.

The reader may not be Batarian, or a Turian raised on a planet with a lot of Batarians, and some of the dynamics here may be opaque. Before the war, Batarian society had three parallel upper classes. There were the cartel-kin, like my family, who all lived in the Terminus Systems. There were the homeworld nomenklatura, who all lived in the Batarian Hegemony. And there were the yangban, who lived in both the Terminus Systems and the Batarian Hegemony.

Yangban measured their wealth in Batarian nobi. Aliens reductively referred to nobi as slaves and would sometimes say that Batarians were the only people to still enslave one another, rather than only others. Yangban weren't a popular bunch. The homeworld nomenklatura thought they were embarrassing, cartel-kin thought they were useless, and aliens thought they were just plain evil. Goodness knows what the nobi thought of them.

Yangban would sometimes say that cartel-kin were all descended from runaway nobi, but this was groundless and rooted in their envy of us.

As we boarded the Spirit dropship, I still saw no signs of a second Mgalekgolo. "Where is this one's bondmate?" I asked Nravian.

"He's biotic, he doesn't need one. His name's Va. Say hi, Va."

I met three horrifying things on Molzhure. The first was Va. Va was the only colony of biotic Mgalekgolo I have met. Va was on my side, and I am grateful for it, but I still do not ever wish to meet another colony of biotic Mgalekgolo.

The eels constituting Va's gestalt body ground against one another in an attempt to welcome me. My translator read the message [Goodbye]. They've never gotten the things to work right with Lekgolo.

The Spirit dropship took off. "So!" Nravian said. "We've got a little time here. You get the basics of how Molzhure works, or doesn't work? Turians in New Celanur, Batarians in Taraga. The city below us, Varavis, is the island spaceport in between."

"Yes."

"New Celanur is all republican city-states, just like Old Celanur was before the Hierarchy drove it down. Taraga is an unreconstructed yangban oligarchy. Eight hundred years ago it was dangerous out in this part of space. The yangban had the money to set the colony up, and they brought us Celanurians along to scare the raiders away. I know there are Batarian planets where the yangban like to fight, some where they're even good at it. This isn't one of them. The Taragae leeched off us to protect themselves, just like they leech off their nobi for everything else."

I wasn't insulted by how she was phrasing things, but I imagined that the Taragae would have told things differently. I looked around the Spirit dropship. Some of the crew members were Batarian natives. "Are none of these gendarmes…"

"No! Definitely not. The Batarians who make up about a fifth of the gendarmerie are all pretty much ex-nobi. The four-fifths remaining are Turian, of course, what with the Jiralhanae and their lower-caste conscripts gone off to fight the Warpath. Except for Va, who is probably worth more than the rest of us put together. But to your question, the Batarian ex-nobis here will tell you worse things about Taraga than I will."

"Who runs Varavis?" I looked out of the Spirit. Varavis may have been the only spaceport on the planet, but it was a proper metropolis, home to perhaps a sixth of Molzhure's population, with the rest divided evenly between the two continents. The Spirit weaved through skyscrapers.

"We do. Military dictatorship. Pretty much all we do run, though. Gendarmerie doesn't have the manpower or resources to take care of much else. New Celanur won't listen to us. Taraga won't listen to us."

"The Jiralhanae purged your officers. The gendarmerie NCOs are running the planet's only spaceport unilaterally?"

"Yep. It's been interesting. So, we banned the Erdans and Bassavists, and there aren't many of either in Varavis. But what Varavis does have is a lot of crime. Even more, now. Covenant came in talking about how they were going to end deviance by teaching everyone to be upright, what with the ethical principles of the Forerunners and the civilizing force of the caste system and all, but it didn't pan out here. Hey, you travel all over the Terminus Systems, uh, Terminus Exarchate. Did it pan out anywhere, the anti-crime stuff?"

"A few places."

"Hmm. So, right now, an armory is under attack, and that's where we're going."

"An armory?"

"Not our armory. They wouldn't dare! It's a gang armory, one of the gangs we sell protection to. They're being attacked by one of the gangs that are stingy. You don't need to worry about it, Va will handle it. So, what's the plan? How is the Covenant going to fix all Molzhure's problems?"

I thought to myself that solving all Molzhure's problems might be beyond the Covenant, certainly beyond me. But there was one good thing that I knew I could do. "We're going the crude way with Taraga. I have with me a Writ of Jubilee signed by the Terminus Exarch."

"Oh!" First Sergeant Nravian's eyes lit up. "Oh, the ex-nobis will love that."

She was right. Some of the native Batarian gendarmes were close enough to overhear the conversation, and I could see them start to whisper excitedly to one another.

"I've issued Writs of Jubilee before. The cult is a more peculiar problem."

"Peculiar is the word for them."

"What is Erde-Tyrene? What are they worshipping?"

Nravian rolled her eyes. "They just took Covenant scripture and added some more nonsense. The antecedent culture of Man arose from Erde-Tyrene. The Forerunners told Man to accept a cushy but subordinate place in the perfect Forerunner galaxy. Man agreed. But when Man warned the Forerunners about the return of Leviathans, the Forerunners ignored Man's prophecy, destroyed Man's spaceships and colonies, and reduced the Men back to terrestrial hunter-gatherers. Then the Leviathans did return, with their Flood, and the Forerunners felt like idiots."

"It is a little more imaginative than these cults usually get. Most of the ones I've seen before just ramble about how you can heal cancer with the power of positive thinking."

"I don't think they're imaginative, I think they're nuts. No, it's just a clumsy parable. Don't accept subordination, no matter how cushy it is. Don't accept the Covenant, even if they offer us Turians a place by the Jiralhanae right near the top of the ladder."

"And how much of New Celanur do the Erdans control?"

"I don't know. They probably don't either. Like I said, New Celanur is all republican city-states. So, if any one tribune joins the cult it's hard to tell how much that matters for the politics of the city-state, and if any one city-state joins the cult it's hard to tell how much that matters for the politics of all New Celanur. But they control enough to stop our little junta from getting anything done outside of Varavis." The Spirit dropship started to dive. "Alright. Armory raid. Got to take care of this."

As the dropship descended, we could hear gunfire, all of which sounded as though it were produced by thermal clip guns.

The Spirit hovered over a firefight. About one dozen Batarians were holed up in a warehouse. Presumably these were the gangers aligned with the gendarmerie, drawn from Varavis' population of ex-nobi who had escaped Taraga. In such circumstances Batarian ex-nobi would often draw together in mafias which made for a petty imitation of cartel-kin. They were under attack by about two dozen Turians. These did not have the red and black Celanurian face tattoos normal to Turians on Molzhure, but instead face tattoos of white and blue, patterned to evoke Turian skulls.

"Give them one chance." Nravian muttered. She turned on a public address system. "This is the Molzhure gendarmerie! Lay down your weapons and place your hands on your head."

No one did. The Batarians because they understood the Spirit was on their side, the Turians because they were scrambling to defend themselves against us. Some of the Batarians smiled and waved at us.

"This is your one warning." Nravian said over the address system. "Ah, well. Va, go. Try to leave a few alive."

The twelve-foot tall five-ton Mgalekgolo stepped out of the dropship and plummeted hundreds of feet downward.

Ruz and I stared at the space where Va had been standing.

"Well, even the normal ones, with bondmates, have a screw loose," Ruz said. He picked up his beam rifle. "If you set me down on top of that building across the street, I'll be able to cover the entrance to the armory pretty well. Try to use the Spirit's turrets to force the gangers into my field of-

"What is your name?" Nravian asked him.

"Dir Ruz."

"Good to meet you, Dir Ruz. Watch this, it'll be fun."

As Va fell to the earth it flared its biotic powers, which I incorrectly assumed it was going to use to slow its fall. Instead, Va accelerated gravity's pull so that it would fall faster. It landed shield-first on one of the Turians, who imploded against the ground. Va stood up and flared its biotic powers again.

"That Lekgolo colonies exposed to element zero show a superior proficiency in the biotic techniques of the Relay Ecumene is not in doubt." Nravian said sarcastically, mockingly quoting some words of caution she must have heard from somewhere. "But neither is the damaging effect of this exposure upon the Lekgolo psyche. In Mgalekgolo, even more mundane disruptions of the pair-bonding process stifle all normal cognitive development. The Lekgolo experience of consciousness is poorly understood, as is the relationship between consciousness and the manipulation of element zero… Blah, blah, blah. Cry me a river. There should be thousands more like Va. Millions. The Covenant would already have won its war. A lot less people would be dead."

Nravian looked at me and Ruz. "You two look surprised. I just assumed that Anuranite agents would be in the know on these experiments. They ran one on Molzhure ten years ago and had the gendarmerie help seclude it."

"I knew there were experiments with eezo and Lekgolo colonies. I was told the Lekgolo didn't have the biotic potential to make the experiments worth it."

"Oh, no, you soak them with enough eezo and they make better use of it than Asari. Makes sense if you think about it. Asari are good with biotics because they use their voodoo nonsense to link minds whenever they hook up with somebody. Lekgolo eels are doing that same mind-linking voodoo nonsense every second of every day." She looked away, back at the ground. "Has Va wrapped up yet?"

It had. Six of the Turian gangers had surrendered, cast aside the weapons, and were now lying on the ground trembling. From the air it was difficult to tell them apart from the corpses of their fellows. Va stood over them, serene.

"Two of them ran," said Ruz.

"Good," said Nravian. "It's always good for a few to get away so that they can let everybody know how Va did." She called to the Spirit's pilot. "Take us down."

We descended and exited the Spirit. Nravian had a short conversation with the Batarian ganger leader, while Ruz and I helped to bind the surviving Turians. We took the prisoners back with us into the Spirit and lifted off to gendarmerie headquarters.

"Is this normal?" I asked.

"Armory raids? Not really. Every three months or so." Nravian snapped her fingers. "There is something abnormal that happened recently. Maybe you can help with it, if you've got time. It might be an Anuranite Lustration thing. I'm still not certain what it is you do. It does have something to do with the Erdans."

"What are you looking for help with?"

"Do you know what a Yonhet is?"

"Of course."

"Of course? Well, no one here did. But we've got one locked up. He came in last week, wanted to meet with the Erdans. Some species no one's ever seen from the other side of the Haivattan Gate, going to meet with the resident wacky cult that wants to overthrow the Covenant and its gods, we didn't know what to make of it. But we locked him up."

Ruz hissed.

I had only met a few Yonhet. There weren't that many to meet. The Covenant had barely noticed as it rolled over them. Some San'Shyuum had taken the Yonhet just seriously enough to inform them that they were now the Covenant's new scrapper caste. The other lower castes of the classical Covenant resented the Yonhet's exemption from all conscription laws (formally granted in recognition of their limited population and informally granted in recognition of their notorious cowardice), explaining Ruz's attitude. There were few good reasons for a Yonhet to travel to the Terminus Exarchate at all, and none I could see for one to come to Molzhure.

"Do the Yonhet all talk like that?" Nravian asked.

"Yes," I told her.

"Ruz is so happy that he's going to have to listen to it," muttered Ruz.

The Spirit reached gendarmerie headquarters, a sprawling complex that included a prison, an armory about fifty times as large as that of the Batarian gangers, and numerous other facilities. The headquarters were impressive, but then if they were the effective seat of government on the planet, I supposed that was appropriate. Nravian and Va directed Ruz and I to the Yonhet Uxatl Axiperrat before taking their Turian ganger prisoners away for processing.

Axiperrat remained impassive as I entered his cell but flinched as he saw Ruz.

"Why must the aliens of your world treat Uxatl Axiperrat with such suspicion and hostility, but not that one?" he whined. "Axiperrat advises you not to trust the Kig-Yar."

"I'm not a Molzhure native. I'm Qelet B'Norai, from the Anuranite Lustration. You know what that is?"

"Axiperrat believes they represent the Prophet of Sagacity."

"Good. Axiperrat, what are you doing here?"

"He doesn't want to be. The gendarmes locked Axiperrat up!"

"Don't be difficult. Why are you on Molzhure? Why do you want to talk to the local Turian heretics? They only learned about the Great Journey twenty years ago, they might be forgiven for misunderstanding things a little, but you should really know better."

The Yonhet sighed. "Axiperrat can tell you, but he worries you will not believe him."

"Go on."

"Axiperrat believes in unconventional theories about the Relay Ecumene nomads known as the Quarians. He suspects that their disappearance twenty years ago may not have been as panicked and improvised as people believe. Axiperrat came to Molzhure tracing the pilgrimage of a Quarian named Cerit vas'Sakhitot. He believes the Cult of Erde-Tyrene may know something about this Quarian and her pilgrimage. That is the only reason Axiperrat hoped to speak to the cult! The only reason! Axiperrat is a devout believer in the Great Journey! A devout believer! Axiperrat has nothing but love and loyalty for our Covenant and its Prophets! Axiperrat admires the Prophet of Sagacity in particular! Axiperrat-"

"Back up." I had already decided this Yonhet was probably just an idiot, but I wanted to understand his story. "What theories about the Quarians? How do they relate to this pilgrim?"

"Suppose the Quarians did not dive into the Attican Blank blindly. Suppose they knew where they were going. They were intelligent people, yes?"

"Sort of." Nobody else would have been so smart as to create the infamous synthetic peril of the Perseus Veil and almost drive themselves to extinction.

"The Quarian Migrant Fleet disappeared immediately after the Covenant invasion began, yes. It also disappeared immediately after the pilgrim Cerit vas'Sakhitot reported discovery of an antecedent relic. Suppose vas'Sakhitot found a chart. Suppose the Quarians followed the chart! Who knows what they might have found? Who knows what Axiperrat will find, if he follows them?"

"I would think an antecedent chart found in this region of space would pertain to this region of space. The southeastern borders of the Attican Blank, where the Quarians fled to, are on the other end of the galaxy."

"The antecedents did not think in such limited chunks as the peoples of today. They saw the whole picture of things."

"So, this Quarian pilgrim came to Molzhure over twenty years ago. Was the Cult of Erde-Tyrene even active at that point?"

"Axiperrat only knows that Cerit vas'Sakhitot met with Ephor Pratius, and that Pratius is now an Erdan. Really, it is not even true to say that Axiperrat wanted to illegally speak with a heretical cult! Axiperrat only wanted to speak with Ephor Pratius! Who, yes, is in a heretical cult, but as you yourself said, only learned about the Great Journey twenty years ago and so must be allowed some exception! And in fact, right after Axiperrat asked him about Cerit vas'Sakhitot, he was going to advise this Pratius to heed the orthodoxy of High Charity and repent his-"

I raised my hand and cut him off. I had firmly decided the Yonhet was a harmless crank, who had gotten himself into trouble by holding harmless crank ideas. But I could still see a use for him. "I've got it. Axiperrat, you want to earn yourself a release?"

"Earn? Axiperrat never committed any crime and is held unjustly! But yes, he would."

"Ruz, are you up for working undercover?"

Ruz looked unsure. "What are you thinking, boss?"

"After I issue the Writ of Jubilee, I'll be notorious on Molzhure. I won't be able to talk to anyone, Batarian or Turian, without being recognized. And I don't get the impression Molzhure's Turians relax much around Batarians much to begin with. So, you're going to be better placed to dig into a Turian cult than I am."

"They're hardly going to trust any of the Covenant invader races, either. What would my cover be?"

I gestured to the Yonhet. "You're this one's bodyguard, or a fellow scrapper. Whichever you prefer."

Axiperrat and Ruz eyed each other warily.