CHAPTER XI: Hard Stance
Inner Worlds, Tsescontia
Ahti Massador
The overweight senator wobbled out of the luxury hover-car when it landed on the platinum platform. It hovered on level with the tall spires of the city world’s landscape. Below the traffic rolled ever onward and the spires seemed bottomless and across Tsescontia many hundreds of billions of citizens carried on with their day or night and knew little of this moment’s importance. He was followed out of the luxury hover-car by a few aides and six Senate Guardsmen in their famed yellow body-armor. They carried long, slender black rifles on their back and a holstered micro-bolter pistol on their thigh.
Halfway across the platform, he panted as he had tired himself out. He chose to stop there and watch as the foreign delegation’s ship landed. To his surprise, they had chosen to arrive in a gunship, armed and swift no doubt. It told him a lot about the Imperium just that choice. If he hadn’t known they were a militaristic culture he would have known by then. If he had somehow been unaware of their centuries of conquests across half the galaxy.
The rear ramp was lowered and when it hit the ground the small delegation exited. The first out was a frighteningly huge figure in power armor. It was over two meters tall, probably even two and a half meters. The armor was robust and sleek with a golden fist surrounded by beams of light on the chest and the helmet had a large rectangular visor. Attached to their pauldrons was a purple cape and the armor itself was black from top to toe and carrying a bulky, short-barreled rifled. A bolter, Massador realized an actually proper bolter. The micro-bolt pistols such as those of the Senate Guardsmen lined at his back was the closest to bolter-technology the Commonwealth possessed. He was in awe at the sight of the super-soldier of the Imperium, the infamous Secunatus Rexionis. After the giant walked a middle-aged man in a layered suit and an elderly woman in a black robe and at their backs walked two more power-armored soldiers. Looking at the giants he understood how they had come to conquer so much of the galaxy and brought low so many powerful star nations and Urk empires.
“Pardon me, Master Massador,” his aide Kassandra spoke in a low whisper.
“Eh, yes? Speak quickly,” he iterated as he turned his head in her direction, sending ripples down his many chins. Kassandra was not with him as an aide of his senate office but rather she served his household, his family’s personal psycher. She was an elderly woman that was well on the approach to her seventies, but cosmetic surgeries and augmentations had her looking or moving as a woman no older than fifty. Her left her was cybernetic with a special image-enhancer.
“The robed woman is a psychic,” she warned him in her thick, rhotic dialect. His sunken eyes darted to the woman in the delegation. “Around her neck, a necklace depicting a cross and a Terran skull.”
An Inquisition, he understood. A sense of fear hovered over him then. The Inquisition of the Imperium, infamous for its questionable and even dark deeds, was the last folk he wanted to speak with as part of a diplomatic conference. He swallowed hard. Calm yourself Ahti, calm yourself, man. You’re a damn senator of the most civilized government in the galaxy. Act like it.
After having chastised himself he turned his head back to the approaching delegation and whispered to Kassandra, “Be on your guard with her.”
“Naturally, Master Massador,” she assured him in a pleasant and polite tone.
Massador reached out his arms to his side as the Imperial delegates reached him. The leading power-armored man had stepped to the back with the others. “Greetings, greetings. Good afternoon and welcome to Tsescontia, capital of the Second Galactic Commonwealth. I am Senator Ahti Massador of the Galactic Senate.”
“Good day, Senator,” the middle-aged man said with a hard and sharp expression. “Greg Vivaldi, ambassador of the great and supreme Galactic Imperium, appointed by the grace of the god-empress of the galaxy.” His flat tone had hints of superiority.
There was a few seconds of silence before the Inquisitor spoke. It seemed to Massador that she had expected the ambassador to introduce her.
“I am Gretchen van Linde, a servant of the Empress’s humble Inquisition. It is a pleasure to finally see the heart of the Commonwealth with my own eyes,” she said in a pleasant voice.
“You should see it when the towers are covered in snow, oh it’s quite lovely in winter times.” He brushed off the words of Ambassador Vivaldi. He was hardly the first arrogant diplomat or politician that he had dealt with.
Massador half-turned and gestured to the other end of the platform where a walkway had been extended and the hover-platform were connected to the plaza that laid before the Senate Building. The home of the Commonwealth’s Galactica Senatorium. It was a massive building with the main building with a domed roof and dozens of attached towers. It was a true masterpiece and beauty to behold when you saw it for the first time.
“If you follow me now, I will escort you to a chosen chamber in the senate where we can begin the discussion.”
“Fine,” Vivaldi accepted.
“Lead the way, Senator Massador,” said van Linde most pleasantly. As the two parties became one and slowly made their way to the heart of the Commonwealth’s government, the seat of power for the eldest of the great powers – mayhaps excluding the Xel’Azai. “I’m happy that we arrived on a day when the sky is cloud-free.”
“Oh, yes. It’s been pouring for half a week until today.”
“Maybe that’s a good sign for this meeting,” van Linde mused.
“Perhaps, perhaps, Inquisitor van Linde.”
“The city’s beautiful. It reminds me of Terra in the best possible way.”
He heard the smallest snort of disgust from the ambassador.
“It’s very beautiful, indeed. I was born on Byss but I spent most of my life here.”
The halls of the Senate Building was filled with senators, aides and there was a heavy Senate Guards presence at the entrance hall. Twenty guardsmen stood vigil over those who set policy in the heart of democracy. Outside the entrance hall hanged two Commonwealth flags on tall ivory-white poles. The flags were carried gently in the light wind. By the time he had escorted the delegation to the meeting chamber, he was exhausted thrice over. Experienced had long ago taught Massador that his appearance and aristocratic background led many to underestimate him, something he happily uses in his favor. The chamber had several paintings on the walls, a beautiful glass wall with exotic fish swimming on the other side, and a table in the center.
“The guards can wait outside,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll speak better in private.” He wiped his sweaty forehead and smiled at the other two.
“Its Imperial policy to keep bodyguards close on hand,” Ambassador Vivaldi told him nonchalantly.
“It is not our policy. We find weapons undesirable during diplomatic events. Then we waved to the three well-armed super-soldiers. “I am sure they are very useful in frightening lone worlds but you’ll find that things work very differently when you deal with a larger entity like the Commonwealth.”
Vivaldi opened his mouth with an indignant look on his face but van Linde spoke first, “It’s merely a security policy but we don’t mind following your customs. After all, we are in your capital world, not ours.” The smile she gave Vivaldi for a second had the hint of a threat to it.
Then finally they sat down with their bodyguards waiting outside. Only Kassandra joined Massador. She wouldn’t partake in the talks but he wanted her presence to ensure that the Inquisitor tried psychic trickery. Kassandra remained standing a few steps behind him as he settled down on the opposite side of the table from Vivaldi and van Linde.
“First, to start off…” he stated. “…the Galactica Senatorium has asked me to deliver onto you an official protest.” He saw Vivaldi’s face harden. “We are aware of the incident on St. Moorland’s Hope. Where your Third Legion utilized biological weapons against the armed forces defending the planet.”
“The use of bio-weapons were not sanctioned by our government, senator,” Vivaldi stated. “The Minotaur’s Sons Legio was not authorized to use or possess them. The empress is very keen to keep to the Reihnortum Primal Concord. The Third Legio is being punished for their violation.”
“How exactly are they punished?”
“That is not your concern. All you need to know is that it is being handled.”
Knowing that he would get no further information he moved on. “When Her Imperial Majesty the Empress signed the Concord she sat with the Vice Chancellor-Elect and drew up a neutral zone along our shared border.” He then added, “Six months later both our governments signed it.”
“Indeed,” Vivaldi said.
He was going to say something else but Massador interrupted him. “And yet it has already been broken. Ymir’s Respite, occupied by Imperial forces last month.”
“The planet had launched several raids against border worlds. Several unaligned worlds accused them of sponsoring terrorism,” the ambassador claimed.
“My dear ambassador, I was seven when they first started lobbing those claims and the Commonwealth has never been able to prove any of it. Never. Have you found anything?”
“We have yet to properly investigate the matter – it being in the neutral zone-to-be and all – but it is clear that it would fit with the brutal raids into our territory,” van Linde added.
“If the Commonwealth accepts that attacking Ymir’s Respite then why are your forces still there? Our reports show that you have dug in and have transporting its resources to yourselves.”
“Your reports are wrong,” Vivaldi simply claimed.
“Senator, a single planet makes little difference,” van Linde tried to claim.
Massador didn’t envy the position their government had placed them in.
“One planet, next it will be ten planets, then a hundred and then a thousand,” he said firmly, his chins wobbling as he spoke. “The Commonwealth will not stand for it. Your government proposed the original treaty and let me be clear that the Commonwealth will not keep to a broken treaty. It’s very simple you see. Either you withdraw from the system or the treaty will be null-and-void.”
The Senate was last year's elections had brought a lot of changes in the Senate with many sector senators being voted out in favor of a generation of young men and women with a far harder anti-Imperial stance. This new Senate was perfectly willing to go to war with the Imperium and to use its considerable economic and diplomatic strength to forge alliances with even the vilest of Urruk warlords.
“We, eh, will agree to remove our forces from Ymir’s Respite. While we are hesitant to put our people at risk we will do this for relations, and for peace,” Vivaldi said. It sounded like he read from a prepared speech, which made Massador wonder if the Imperium had done this to test how far they could push the Commonwealth.
He put on a wide smile and said, “Excellent. I knew you would.”364Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEOn0YiCfRi
