> Russo’s eyes were beginning to swell by the time they took him to see the Lord Captain.
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A bell tolled.
The deacon wore cloth-of-gold robes, finely embroidered. Heavy boots thudded against the corrugated metal floor as he made his way to the front. He passed through crooked rows of hastily arranged folding chairs that squealed unpleasantly whenever they were dragged or bumped. Black-clad men and women stood uneasily in their rows, still with uncomfortable hesitance.
They’d gone about this too fast. This wasn’t the way. The incense was lit but the smell dissipated quickly in the vast upper reaches of the cargo bay.
A bell tolled.
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> The brutes yanked him by the arms, tied behind his back, and his shoulder wrenched as they shoved him to his knees. Through puffy lids he could barely make out the face of a skull staring down at him. “Captain Salieri,” he said weakly.
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Lord Captain Scipio Salieri wore as his face a helmet set with the skull of his father. He did not often remove it. It was done in bone-grey ceramite and lacquered glossy black.
He wore, too, a full set of black-lacquered carapace trimmed in gold and polished till it shone like a mirror. The sign of his family was embossed on his chest in shining gold, the heavy S inset in a gear. His knuckles were spiked, his sword at his hip. Here, he stood at the frontmost left aisle seat, his attention fully on the memorial iconographs. The deceased wore a carefree smile, set among smaller depictions of the saints.
The body itself rested in the personnel airlock, prepared with hyssop and myrrh for its destination in deep space.
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> Black-gauntleted hands grabbed him by the lapels and slammed him painfully against the bulkhead. The silvery skull grinned a toothy grin inches away.
>
> “Sir, I-“
>
> He was slammed again against the bulkhead.
>
> “I don’t need” the skull growled, “to hear any mewling explanation. I know why you’ve done what you did.”
>
> Out of the hazy corners of his vision, Russo could see one of the two brutes grin nastily. Vinnius, he realized. He knew these men. He tried to send a significant look.
>
> “Controlling an operation as massive as this requires an amount of care and secrecy that you lack the capability to conceive of. Every move we make is observed by the law, by the Families, by a million watching eyes.”
>
> This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
>
> Vinnius caught his look and smirked all the more.
>
> “An undertaking like ours cannot withstand the rot of treachery within; the rot takes hold and the watching eyes become biting fangs, tearing us apart until we live in a cell or a crumpled heap beneath a sewer. Everyone in the Family must do their part, or everyone will pay the cost.”
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A bell tolled.
The deacon sprinkled fragrant on the iconographs. “You shall sprinkle me with hyssop and I shall be clean”, he intoned. “You shall wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.”
All eyes were on him, Salieri knew. He could feel them boring into his back. But he was shielded by the armor. His face inside the helmet was just as unmoved as the skull on the outside. He knelt as was right and necessary at this part of the ceremony, and at a pause, he heard the Family behind him kneel as well.
“The universe is God's, and the fullness thereof; the world and all that dwell therein”, the deacon continued. “You are dust and to dust you shall return.”
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> The Lord Captain dropped him suddenly. Russo went hard to the ground with a whimper of pain.
>
> The Captain’s boot set down in front of Russo’s nose, startling him with its closeness, its heaviness. Distantly above he could see the pale skull grinning its frozen grin.
>
> “But you didn't see any of this, I know. You saw some criminal enterprise and determined you could be clever, and skim money off the top. You're a mouse, looking up at giants and wondering how you can take the crumbs from their plate. I have many loyal subordinates who do their part without complaint and who reap the harvest that their seeds of diligence and dedication have sown.”
>
> “Please” screeched Russo. “Give me a chance!”
>
> “I do not need any mice like you.” The Captain’s voice was icy, contemptuous. “You do not see the grand picture. This is not a gang of thieves. Our operation is the blast furnace of a new world, starting on this ship. The Salieri family's wealth will drive this machine as we build something better than the disarray beneath us.”
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It was not part of the standard ceremony, but Salieri’s subordinates were practiced at meeting unconventional orders. The deacon lifted an incense censer from its hook and led a small precession to the nearby personnel airlock.
Salieri himself fell into step with the deacon. He tilted his head slightly and the shorter man nodded to his unasked question.
“Still think it’s too circus, yeah. Faith is not a spectacle.”
“This cannot happen again,” Salieri growled.
The deacon was quiet. “No, of course not,” he said eventually.
The airlock was already sealed. The space inside was still pressurized, so that the force from opening the outer lock would propel Mr. Russo’s bodily remains far away from the ship. Eventually, the body would burn to ash from the friction of the planetary atmosphere far below.
Tonight, Mr. Russo would rain over the planet of his birth.
Both the outer and inner locks were steel frames around thick transparent blocks of ultraglass.
Salieri began the eulogy, but did not turn to face his men. Instead, he looked down at Russo.
“The Salieri family no longer finds any benefit from your continued existence. Perhaps your ashes will fertilize the fields of the new world; then, at least, you will have contributed something useful to humanity. Goodbye, Mr. Russo.”
He looked on serenely as the deacon drew a holy sign on the glass with his fingertips. “Repent”, his old friend whispered.
Russo could not hear them, and did not understand the deacon’s sentiment. He screamed behind the soundproof glass, pounded on the inside of the airlock weeping. But none of his strikes made the slightest sound through six inches of airlock.
Salieri gave the deacon a look, and the deacon put his hand over the airlock release button, gave a final nod to the man behind the glass, and pressed.