Jaheed

"We're going back," Jaheed replied.

There was a time when Kore's absence would have broken him. The Security Chief had been his constant companion for four years now; the one unchanging variable in a life replete with chaos and uncertainty. The two were all but joined at the hip and she was, by legal definition, both his sister and his only living relative. And so, naturally, there was a time when Jaheed would have been quite helpless without her.

However, that particular version of Jaheed had died along with his uncle. This Jaheed was on his feet before anyone else, powering through the nausea via sheer force of will. This Jaheed was looking at this whole wretched, miserable tragedy as though it were merely another puzzle to solve — the most complex, most difficult, most beguiling puzzle yet. Coldly, calmly, he weighed the variables. The edges, the oddities. He considered his own pieces: the crew, the ship, the myriad contacts and blackmail and quid pro quo he had amassed over four years as the Emperor's protégé. He pored over it all until finally he was confident he grasped fully The Shape Of The Thing.

"Back to Madriu?" Ket Sal coughed, climbing to his feet as well. The Scion was recovering quickly via a cocktail of stimulants and blockers, though still he reached up with a handkerchief to dab at the blood trickling from his eye. Beside him, Ammit stood at rigid attention — the only one entirely unaffected by the Gorger's violent emergence. "I'm quite opposed to that notion, myself — in the interest of not getting blown out of the sky. I'm sure you understand."

"It'd be suicide," Diesch agreed, head leaned back against the wall. The man looked like pure death, and was taking the aftereffects of the jump by far the worst.

"Hardly," Jaheed told them. "But first-" He turned to Tarsus, who was leaning heavily against the back of her chair. "Captain Tarsus. See to Sekhmet — do whatever you can. Take Ammit with you."

"Sure," Tarsus coughed, nodded her head. Ammit looked to Ket Sal for approval — the Scion gave a small, two-fingered gesture — and the two set off at once, the Se-dai supporting the beleaguered pilot with one burly arm.

Now, it was just Abel Diesch and Ket Sal. These were the minds Jaheed had at his disposal, to slave to the task ahead.

"The fact is, the planetary government remains loyal to the Emperor — can we agree on that?" Jaheed gave Ket Sal a pointed look. The Scion sighed, fishing in his jacket for a cigarette that was sorely needed.

"That's the conclusion we came to, yeah," he admitted. "But the city is the city. The defense force is their own."

"And so, the city was acting alone," Jaheed explained. "They were almost certainly paid off. What do you think the odds were, that they knew in advance they'd be shooting down a Mercurian vessel? I'd bet quite low myself. Void, I might not even bet at all. But I am willing to wager that they just about shat themselves when they saw the Cloud Gorger's ID pop up in their targeting reticle, and thus I'm willing to bet that they will shit their pants when we come back right back. The last thing these people want is to ever see us again."

"So, what, bluster our way in?" Ket Sal scoffed. "To what end?"

"To what end? What the hell do you think?" Jaheed demanded. He glanced around, looked each man in the eye, and said in a voice reminiscent of the Jade Emperor himself: "We're getting Kore back."

Not an objective. Not a hope. It was a statement of pure and immutable fact.

"Okay," Ket Sal, agreed, after a moment. He put his hands together. "What do we have?"

"A name," Jaheed said. "Jiang Tsen. Diesch?"

"Already on it," the Black Hound told them, tablet in hand at once. His eyes flicked up, momentarily. "She-" Diesch carefully avoided using her name, "-was saying a string of numbers, before she...you know. Anyone catch it?"

"Six-five-seven-four-four-nine-oh-two," Ket Sal recited at once. The Scion had been watching from the shipboard cameras and, of course, possessed an eidetic memory. "Is that a-"

"A tag number for a hovertruck," Diesch confirmed. "That's a hell of a lot more useful than a name. Jiang Tsen — that could easily be a pseudonym. And if it's not, he's probably under another name anyway."

"How did Sekhmet even know his name?" Ket Sal mused, fingers steepled and leaning back against the wall. Pensive, now, as he too worked at this gordian knot. "And why were they working so hard to kidnap Kore of all people? We're missing something."

"Oh shit," Diesch blurted out, and every head turned at once. "Jiang Tsen."

"You know him?" Jaheed demanded, craning to see over the former detective's shoulder.

"Me, personally? No. But you might." He folded the tablet, looked up at both of them with alert, bloodcrusted eyes. This was Diesch in his element, the Hound back on the hunt. "Are either of you familiar with a group called Heraldry?"

For just an instant, the Jade Wolf was gone, and Jaheed was just a frightened young man on Callisto, staring up at the Emperor of the Known Universe and begging for his life to be spared. Drenched in the blood of his sister, his brother. His hateful bastard of a father.

And then, again, that Jaheed was gone.

"Fuck."

"Yep."

"Wanna fill me in?" Ket Sal arched an eyebrow.

"They were a terrorist cell, back on Callisto," Jaheed explained, folding his arms. A bevy of unpleasant memories were flooding back, and he was doing his best to ignore them. "A pretty major thorn in our side. Highly mobilized, highly militarized."

"Oh, they were worse than that," Diesch chimed in, typing away all the while. "After the Vell Dynasty was expunged-" he said this without sympathy, which was due in no small part to his own experience on Proxima, "-Heraldry caused trouble for the Mercurian regent for months. Things nearly erupted into a full-blown civil war. And then, one day, they just...disappeared." He shook his head. "Since then, Heraldry've been spotted in five different systems. Every time, their activities precipitate the arrival of the Sky-Melter fleet by one solar cycle. Current Imperial Doctrine is to consider them an extension of the Crimson Emir, whether by finance or direct involvement."

"Tsen is their leader, then, I take it?" Ket Sal asked. "A warmonger masquerading as a freedom fighter. How terribly droll. But that still doesn't explain anything — what the hell did the Emir's agents want with Kore?"

But all the while, Jaheed had been pondering just that.

"She was...a servant, when we first met," the acolyte said slowly. Ket Sal arched an eyebrow; Diesch just resumed typing as though he had heard this all before. "Yet she saved me from the Liquidators — killed one in hand-to-hand combat, if you can believe it. I always knew she was..." He trailed off. "She wasn't just a servant. Or a miner. She couldn't have been."

"You think she was involved with Heraldry?" Ket Sal stated the obvious.

"That's a fact," Diesch confirmed. All turned to stare at the former detective, who steadfastly refused to look up from his screen. "She told me, once."

"You knew?" Jaheed blinked, taken momentarily aback. "When?" Though Kore and Diesch had grown to tolerate one another's presence, there was still no love lost between them, and it was difficult to imagine Diesch knowing anything about her that Jaheed didn't. He felt an odd little pang of annoyance, at that.

"Proxima," Diesch answered dryly, and Jaheed wisely decided to pry no further.

"Okay," the Jade Wolf nodded his head, because the pieces were indeed coming together now. "Alright. That's something I can work with. I need to make a call, over a secure channel. And then we need to get back onto Madriu and get someone alone in a room. Someone who can give us some concrete fucking answers. It's safe to assume Kore and Tsen are off-planet already, no?" The others nodded. "But everything leaves an imprint. Everything. We'll trace this thing back, line by line, and when we find them..." Jaheed's hands curled into fists — the only display of anger, up until this point, from a young man who was very angry indeed. His jaw locked tight, and he said in a clipped voice: "I'll kill Jiang Tsen myself. But first-" He pointed, again, to the door, "-we have another matter to discuss."

----------------------------------------

Up until now, Jaheed had kept his every emotion bottled tight within close confines of cold pragmatism. But, this? Oh, this one hurt.

Everyone on the Cloud Gorger had known what Sekhmet was, of course. None had harbored any delusions as to what went on beneath that human-shaped veneer. But it was one thing to know and another thing to actually see the woman they had all worked with and lived with now gutted open, laid out in myriad pieces within the haelen-pod's suspension field. She was no woman at all, not anymore. Just a spectacularly complex machine draped loosely in the skin of someone Jaheed once knew. Even her biological organs were unrecognizable to that of an ordinary human's; and though one half of her face yet remained, it was impossible not to see the grinning teal skull as her true visage.

Sekhmet didn't look like a person. She didn't even look like a corpse. She looked like a thing, and that realization was like a dagger straight to Jaheed's heart.

Tarsus was beside the pod, head bowed and expression somber, as the trio approached. Her fearless resolve in the face of certain death — in the heart of the crisis — had given way, and now she wore her grief openly. She tried to speak and was, for a moment, too choked up to do so.

"I did what I could," she told them, weakly. "Which was fucking nothing. I mean, I'm just a mechanic. And this-this is-" She gestured futilely. "Nobody in the whole Domain knows how to do this biotech stuff. Nobody. Even if I did, I don't have the tools..." She gestured, again, at nothing. "I don't know how to help her."

"She cannot be helped," Ammit declared. The Se-dai was looming protectively over the pod with arms crossed and a stern, serious expression upon her face. If she mourned, she did not show it. "She is dead."

"Is her brain...?" Jaheed trailed off, momentarily unfocused. He forced himself to lock on target, forced himself to tighten up. There was no room for weeping despair. The puzzle yet loomed. There was a solution to this, too; all he had to do was find it. "What's the state of her brain?"

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"Mostly intact, far as I can tell," Tarsus answered. "Not that I can really open her up. But the scan looks alright to me, I think. Maybe. It's..." For the third time, she made that limp-wristed I-just-don't-know gesture. "I mean, it doesn't look a lot like any brain I've ever seen before. It's hard to even tell."

"Well, that's all we need." Jaheed glanced around — settled upon Ammit's steady gaze. "So long as her mind is intact, we could just fix her and turn her back on. Yes?"

"No," Ammit told him bluntly.

"Why not?" Diesch demanded, with surprising intensity. He and Sekhmet, Jaheed recalled, had been close friends — kindred spirits united, perhaps, by a shared renegade soul. It was little wonder to see him so aggressively invested.

"Because it is not our way," Ammit said. "The Bouchers do not mend that which has passed on. Death is failure, in the Sovereign's eyes."

"Who gives a fuck about the Sovereign?" Jaheed scoffed, confused and increasingly irritated. "Since when do you care about tradition?"

"It is the will of Le Sang Neuf, as well," Ammit explained, patient but stern. Ket Sal was watching her from the corner, curious and quiet. "We all swore an oath — that there shall be no more Se-dai born into this world. We will halt all production and then, in time, we shall all fall as she has. We shall serve as long as we are able, yes, but we shall not endeavor to prolong our tortured existences." Her eyes flicked down to Sekhmet's remains, and a shadow of regret flashed across her face. "That is-"

"Don't you start," Diesch was hissing, storming across the room, and before anyone could stop him he was jabbing a finger right at Ammit's breastplate. The Se-dai caught his wrist lightning-fast, threatening to break it, but the Black Hound didn't falter for even a moment. "Oh, don't you fucking start with that shit!" he roared. "You know she never believed in any of your goddamn bullshit!"

"What she believed is irrelevant," Ammit snapped, with dangerous vehemence. Ket Sal made a small, surreptitious gesture, and she realized Diesch's wrist at once — yet still, she glared at the Black Hound all the same. Diesch, for his part, remained right where he was. "She is dead. She wishes for nothing. She dreams of nothing."

"You know what she believed?" Jaheed interrupted. His words cut through the chaos like a scalpel. All heads snapped to him at once. All attention was centered solely upon the Jade Wolf, for he was a bastion of calm and clarity at the eye of this terrible storm.

"What Sekhmet believed, when she died, was that she failed," Jaheed told them. Tarsus flinched. Diesch hung his head. Ammit's expression tightened, and Ket Sal just observed. "You know what she said to me?" the acolyte went on. "Her last words? Sorry, Kore. That was the last thing she ever said. She died believing she wasn't fast enough, or strong enough, or Se-dai enough to rescue the woman she loved."

"Void," Diesch muttered, looking away.

"I am going to do everything in my power to bring her back," Jaheed was speaking to Ammit directly, now. The Se-dai's expression remained unchanging. "And I already know Ket Sal is with me on this. But now, Ammit, I need your help. She needs your help. We could just order you to do so, sure. I know that. But I don't want to, not if I can help it." He took a single step foward, laid a hand upon the tank in which Sekhmet's body yet hung. His gaze was of such intensity that it evenly matched Ammit's own. "I'm asking you for help, Ammit. Of your own free will. Because whatever your differences, you know just as well as I do — she didn't deserve to die like that. He paused. "Doesn't deserve to die like that."

Ammit, by sheer force of conditioning, just looked to Ket Sal.

"I mean," the Scion offered, speaking for the first time. "Sekhmet saved your life once, which means she'll always have one over you." He shrugged his shoulders. "Wanna make it even?"

The Se-dai was silent for a long, long time. And then, finally:

"Alright," she conceded, her expression softening just incrementally. "You have a plan?"

"We need-" Jaheed started.

"I might, actually," Ket Sal interrupted. Jaheed whirled around, shot him a quizzical glance, and immediately the Scion put up his hands.

"It's a longshot," Ket Sal quickly explained. "And a stretch. And far from ideal. And likely — I mean, like, ninety-nine percent likely — to be complete and utter bullshit. But..." His eyes drifted to the pod. "Look, I need to speak with Maít. Is there a proper signal booster on this old heap?"

"Tarsus, get him whatever he needs," Jaheed ordered, and the pilot moved to do so at once. "Diesch, keep working that trail. Ket, we need to discuss strategy when you're finished. And Ammit-" the Se-dai grunted, "I need you sharp. Spar, train, whatever it is you do. But the Cloud Gorger just lost the entirety of its muscle — which means you're all we have, from hereon out. Understood?"

"Toujours prêt," Ammit confirmed.

"Then let's get to it," Jaheed declared. And at once, everyone moved.

-----

Jaheed's quarters had transformed, over the years, from a simple bunk to a crowded study, with a Mercury-imported synth-oak desk and stacks of books and a holographic display table all alongside trinkets and trophies and keepsakes from a hundred different worlds. And amidst this clutter he sat, now, rigid and ramrod-straight, and listening with one earphone to a voice on the other side of the Domain.

"Vell?" that gruff voice demanded. "The acolyte?"

"The very same," Jaheed nodded, unconsciously smiling for effect. "I know you as well, Kossad Varras. I know you well indeed."

"And...?" the voice trailed off. "Is there a reason why you're calling me on my personal line, acolyte? I have a great many-"

"You've been stealing from the Jade Emperor," Jaheed said flatly.

What followed was a long, long silence. For a moment Jaheed considered that he had pushed too far, too fast — that the other man would simply hang up the line, and that would be that. But finally, of course, that harsh voice returned once more.

"Who do you think you are?" Varras demanded. "How dare you come to me with-"

"It's been going on for two and a half years now," Jaheed sighed, explaining this as though it were the most rote, obvious thing in the world. As though he had already said these words a hundred times before. "Every resupply, some rifles go missing. Some small arms, some bombs. Even some armor, every now and again. You have a contact on Venus who fences the stuff to insurgent operations all across the Domain, and in exchange you make a hefty profit off of 'eminent domain requisitions'. Valuable objects in the right places, at the right times, that later happen to go 'missing' from storage and records both. That's how your fence pays you. Am I missing anything?"

Again, a long pause. Then: "So why am I still alive?"

"Because you're useful," Jaheed told him, speaking as one might to a confused child. "Because at this specific moment, I have a very specific role that you happen to quite specifically fill. And so, for the next month you are going to be on call. And sometime in the next month I will indeed call, and you will indeed come."

"That's not-" the voice sputtered. "You-I can't! We're due to ship out any day now!"

"You can, and you will," Jaheed said, quite unsympathetically. "Or I'll bury you, which in the end would be no particular skin off my back. The choice is yours, Varras. Failure is equivalent to death, in this case. Which—I mean, c'mon, a man in your line of work should be used to that sort of thing." He chuckled lightly. "I'll be in touch." And then, before Varras could respond, Jaheed set the receiver aside and terminated the call.

The so-called Jade Wolf just sat there, for a moment, and thought.

Jiang Tsen. He rolled the name around in his head, over and over. Jiang. Tsen. Tsen, Jiang. Heraldry. Callisto. And a woman who came to him, in the dead of night, desperate for someone to believe in.

She had worked for Tsen, he decided, and had infiltrated the palace at his behest. It just seemed the most likely conclusion. And then, of course, there had been something between Kore and her boss — some falling-out, some betrayal of trust. Something Kore had never told him about, not once. Not ever. Something Kore had obviously been trying to run from, trying to forget about.

Tsen, it seemed, had not forgotten.

So, was this all just for revenge? That couldn't be right. Jaheed poured himself a glass of ice-cold water, took a frigid gulp. Felt it flow through him, felt himself sharpen to a needle-point. No, he decided. This couldn't be purely personal. The Mondat had been involved, after all, and he knew firsthand that the Mondat were cripplingly expensive.

Well, then. Was it all just to get at him? Was Kore merely a piece of leverage, of blackmail? That, too, did not properly align with the facts at hand. With a force that size, why not target Jaheed himself? Mondat, artillery, several dozen Heraldry agents. All lives lost and resources spent just to take Kore, and to take her alive.

The puzzle itched and itched and itched at his mind, until Jaheed was forced to concede that he simply did not have enough information. He needed more. Needed Diesch to do his miracle work, as he always did. Just a few more pieces to this puzzle, and then the shape-

An alarm blared, signaling that the Gorger would soon be dropping back into realspace. Jaheed shot to his feet and departed for the bridge at once.

This, he knew, would be the tricky part.

----------------------------------------

"You want me to take the lead?" Ket Sal offered, as Jaheed took his place at the captain's chair. "I'm quite good at acting obnoxious, when the situation calls for it."

"By all means," Jaheed gestured. "Just get us down there in one piece."

Then, the Cloud Gorger slipped into realspace — slipped, rather than tore, and instead of a violent jostle there was but a mild little vibration beneath their feet. Diesch alone suffered a small nosebleed, and nothing more.

And then, immediately, they were being hailed.

"City defense force," Tarsus announced, stating the obvious. "That was pretty damn quick. Think they're feeling guilty?"

"I certainly hope so," Ket Sal agreed, standing now at the center of the bridge. He straightened his tie, adjusted his cuffs, and smoothed his hair back. "Ammit. How do I look?"

"Presentable," the Se-dai told him, with perhaps a faint hint of amusement.

"That'll work."

"Send it," Jaheed ordered. Tarsus did so at once. Ahead, the viewport went dark — then it resolved to an image of a slender, pale-faced woman in a brown uniform, who did indeed look quite starkly guilty as she regarded the yellow-eyed Scion before her. Those yellow eyes, Jaheed knew, carried with them a deadly reputation, and that reputation carried far indeed.

"Vessel Cloud Gorger, Imperial Shuttle designation theta-six-seven-oh-niner-two-two," the woman recited, her words tight and clipped. Masking herself beneath a veneer of professionalism and protocol, as best she could. "There are multiple standing warrants for your arrest and seizure. Turn away now or prepare to be boarded."

"That's a lie," Ket Sal declared bluntly. And just like that, with just a few words, the entire balance of power shifted in the Scion's favor — with that casual refutation of an existential threat. Diesch had, of course, done his own investigation, and had come to the conclusion that there were no such warrants for the Gorger anywhere on Madriu. Nor was there any record of the conflict with the Defense Force at all. There would be no search, no seizure, and it was unlikely indeed that they would ever dare fire upon an Imperial vessel.

"I beg your pardon?" the woman asked, her confidence just ever-so-slightly shaken.

"I spoke quite clearly," Ket Sal snapped. "You may have deliberately misheard me, however, so let me say it once more: that is a lie. There are no warrants. We have broken no laws. We are a Mercurian Vessel, and you have fired upon us without provocation. Upon a Scion's vessel, without provocation!"

"I-that-" the woman stammered. "Identify yourself."

"Very well," Ket Sal agreed, with an aggressively performative huff. "I am the Thrice-Empowered Blessed Star-Chosen Holy Scion Ket Dereinos Den Sal, one of the twenty-seven chosen voices of the Jade Emperor, Volsif XCVII. I am fully empowered to speak in the jade tongue; the Holy Emperor's words are my words and his will is my will. This all has been written and recorded as a matter of empyreal decree." And even Jaheed might very well have been cowed before a such a magnificently arrogant, snarling, disdainful, chest-puffing display like that. It was a true masterpiece of insult and contempt, all from a man who traded in both for a living.

"But..." the woman trailed off, the fight having all but fled from her voice. Her situation — that which she currently represented — was dawning heavily upon her. "The Cloud Gorger is registered to one Jaheed Vell..." As though that were the real issue, here.

"Right here," Jaheed waved, stepping into frame. Ket Sal moved graciously to accommodate him. Scion and acolyte stood side by side, now, before an increasingly nervous defense-controller. "Good afternoon. Scion Ket Sal and myself are embarking upon a joint operation as per the seven thousand, three hundred and sixty-fourth holy Precept. This vessel is, for the duration of our joint remit, his vessel. And vice versa."

"My vessel," Ket Sal confirmed, quite nastily. "Make no mistake. You fired upon my vessel."

"There was no such-"

"Cassandra," Jaheed cut in a bit more gently, reading the woman's name from the tag on her uniform. "Might I speak plainly?"

"That-" She stiffened, inclined her head. "By all means." By now she understood that there was likely only one way out.

"Thank you," Jaheed smiled, as though she had just done him a favor. "You, Cassandra Oher, have made a terrible mistake."

The silence that descended, then, was like death itself. Jaheed took note of a single bead of sweat rolling down the side of her face.

"Now, then," Jaheed steepled his fingers, still entirely calm and pleasant. "Might I offer you some recourse?"

"Um," the woman gulped. "Yes. Please."

"This is all well, well above your paygrade," Jaheed told her. "I recommend, then, that you pass the buck to someone a mite more qualified to be having this discussion. I recommend you make way for my ship to land as soon as humanely possible. Because, miss Oher, you may not have been involved in any of the grievances I have suffered. But there is one thing I know for certain." Like a flipped switch, his expression turned to one of genuine murder. "Right now, Cassandra, you are in my way. I have your face, your name, and your position. And I promise I will never forget you."

There really wasn't much else to say, after that. The Cloud Gorger landed without incident.