Sighing, the Magister of Plenty leaned over the data tablet on the table, checking some numbers. “The prices of meat haven’t yet stabilized; we need time for the subsidies to make their way through the economy.”
“Time we don’t have,” the new Magister of the Treasury, appointed shortly after the desertion of the old, retorted, “CAST will be knocking down the gates of Poslush long before a farmer can raise his livestock. Besides, we’re paying our soldiers half their usual rate; what made you think we could afford paying every farm in the country?”
“The first batches of atomic munitions should be leaving the factories soon; we can stymie CAST with those, perhaps long enough to establish autarchy over the remaining territories.” the Magister of War postulated, exuding the smell of cautious hope.
“Well, when we can take apart bomb cores and eat them, I’m sure the people will be very grateful that you spent precious money on wonder weapons and not food.” the Magister of Plenty spat back.
“There’s no food to buy anyways!”
“Then we must divert resources to securing it! People are watching their children rake through refuse piles to find something to eat; how long do we have until their anger falls on us?”
“We still control the Dynastic Commissariat and the military; we can make them bend the knee if we must.”
The Magister of Plenty opened her mouth, clearly about to say something about how that would merely be a temporary fix that would further aggravate the problem, but thought better of it, instead turning on her heel and marching out of the conference room. She wasn’t wrong, but admitting that she was right would mean admitting that, at the moment, it was impossible to both continue the production of weapons that could potentially take the pressure off the Combine and provide basic services to their citizens. The Magister of War made a mental note to report her colleague to DynaCom for defeatist sentiments, then left the room as well, heading downstairs to the throne room of the greatest palace of the Combine.
The High Judge had not gotten up from her seat in three days. Her breath came in uneven, ragged gasps, and she made an off-putting low, buzzing groan when she exhaled. Her eyes were wide and rarely took themselves off a particular point in faraway space. She had to be regularly washed, as she could not muster the will to move and simply relieved herself where she sat whenever she felt the need, and the only time she ever stirred was when her attendants attempted to place food and water in her mouth, and then she would kick and flail at them wildly, screaming like an animal. They’d long since given up on trying to get her to eat and had begun feeding her intravenously for that reason.
The Magister saluted the High Judge as she entered; Katana, of course, said nothing. A soldier wearing Judicial Guard armor saluted her in turn. “Overjudge Kirpan, the Dynastic Commissariat has arrested a number of seditionists in the lower districts of Triumph.” he reported, walking alongside the Magister.
“That’s hardly anything special, Captain.” the Magister replied, not deigning to look at him. “Their leader has admitted to conspiring to abolish the Pos Dynasty and form a republic in its place.” the Captain added.
“So they’re insane as well as traitors; unsurprising,” Kirpan noted, “extract all the information you can out of them, then dispose of them as normal.”
“Ma’am, if what they say is accurate, then they possess not only men but weapons enough to arm them. That, and they say that they aren’t the only ones with such resources.”
Kirpan stopped in her tracks, staring down the Captain. “Then we shall crush them in the field, as we have before,” she enunciated, “and if that doesn’t work, we still hold power over six billion souls. They don’t have a chance, and I begin to suspect your faith in our cause by your suggestions that they do.”
The Captain shrank back, the words coming from his mouth hesitantly. “I hold no such sentiments, ma’am.”
“That’s what I thought,” the smell of authority exuded from Kirpan, “now inform the Commissariat that they are to stamp out this madness at once. Show no mercy; one does not yank weeds with a gentle hand. You are dismissed.”
The soldier saluted, running off. Kirpan, sighing, sat down on the floor before the High Judge, watching her chest rise and fall. For a moment, Katana’s eyes flicked to hers, their dilated pupils planting a deep-seated unease within Kirpan. Katana mumbled something under her breath, then returned to staring at the wall. “Your Dominance,” Kirpan asked the air about her, “what do I do?”
—
Even as the agricultural powerhouses of the empire jumped ship, the affluent people of Poslush had not cut down their appetites. Hunger was not simply a distant memory before the war; it was an impossibility. The homeworld of the Poslushi had been supported with food from the colonies since they first reached for the stars, and not a single person on the planet had gone to work with an empty belly in centuries. For generations, calories were something other planets fought over, and now larvae toddled through the streets alone, searching for a discarded bone to gnaw on, a bit of spilled grain to pick up off the dirty road and eat. The various blue-collar workers of Sunsword’s Triumph had already taken to gathering around the various nobles as they went out, holding out their hands for a spare morsel or money to purchase one. Many of Triumph’s upper class had thus permanently retired to their estates as a result, but a certain few took pleasure in tossing coins into the crowds and watching grown men fight over them, tumbling over each other like children. Occasionally, one would crack his head on the stones of the road, and the constables, seeing the strange way some of the more desperate passing his body looked at it, would make haste to carry it off.
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Now, however, the tradesmen of the lower districts, seeing their larders running thin and their children crying for food, had had enough. What had previously been an unfocused dismay at the state of things had clarified into a roiling hatred for the fat ones they saw still eating. The judgment day was close at hand, but not today, which was why, when a number of their compatriots were arrested and a DynaCom detachment had been spotted heading their way, panic briefly ruled amongst the wannabe revolutionaries. If they stayed and accepted the inevitable search, their weapons would be found and anyone harboring those weapons would be executed. If they ran, they would be caught at the city gates and the same fate would befall them.
Thus, it was decided, and as the enforcers approached the poor boroughs of the city in their shining white combat exoskeletons, a dozen windows flew open at once and men popped out, spraying down the narrow streets with their rifles. The DynaCom men were protected by their armor, and the various bullets and energy blasts sparked harmlessly off them, but the sudden shower of gunfire and the clattering, terrifying reports of the powderguns threw them into a confusion long enough for a sewer grate to slide open and a large oil canister to sail out, landing at their feet.
The improvised bomb sent men flying into the air, not all of them in one piece, and shattered every window and storefront on the block. When the ink-black smoke cleared, all was silent save the moans and wails of the wounded and dying. The respite did not last, however, as regular infantry could soon be seen hurrying down the roads towards the district, with quadruped walkers following closely behind. In accordance with doctrine, they didn’t hesitate to open fire, their armored support unloading rounds from their coilguns into the buildings until they gave way, folding in on themselves in plumes of dust and smoke that could be seen across the city. Yet, when their men examined the wreckage, they found only a few bodies within, all crowded around entrances to the city’s sewers.
A few minutes later, a small clique of men who had read of the human philosophy of anarchism saw the rising clouds over Triumph, quickly deduced what had happened, and got a quite similar idea. An hour and thirty firebombs later, they were hiding out in the tunnels beneath the city too, and Broodmatrons were running out of their burning mansions, their servants hauling food, precious food, on their backs. The moment they were seen walking out and about, unguarded and with so much food, they were mobbed, and those accosting them didn’t bother to beg for it. The fire marshals hurried to the fires as quickly as they could, only to find the paths blocked by dozens of Poslushi, some standing firm against them, but most simply munching contently at the various delicacies they had pilfered.
Now that they thought of it, the firemen hadn’t been paid either, and that food did look quite tasty...
—
The Broodmatron of Naspolush winced as a trio of Aerial Knights screamed overhead, their plasma engines leaving fading blue contrails in the night sky. Soon, they’d be dropping tunnel-breaker bombs on the capital itself, or so she heard; the very site of the Venerable Ancestor’s coronation was now a hotbed of insurrection. It was surreal to even conceive. Had the universe gone mad?
Still, she had to have faith; the Combine would persevere, as it always did. She was sure things had been worse before, and they had crawled out of it alive; she was struggling to recall a time when it was worse, but she was sure there was one nonetheless. When all was said and done, they would win; the process of rebuilding the nation would be arduous, of course, but they had to succeed. Thus, with a shaky hope in her heart, she looked out of the windows of her palace chambers, watching as tens of thousands of soldiers embarked onto their lumbering transport walkers and trudged away into the darkness to the east.
Not long after the second largest city on Poslush was out of sight, the men in the convoy got to talking. They shared stories of home; in some carriages, less than a third of the soldiers were from Poslush itself. They talked about how they couldn’t find good boots, or how, despite the fact that a dozen crates of energy cells were shipped to a single company, they each received only one or two, and the logistics officer was seen that night talking to an unseemly Dreamwalker with a cargo shuttle. The general consensus was that anyone with the means and half a brain was securing their own future. It was making enough money to weather the storm until it blew over, falling in with the humans, or laying down and letting the Warlord take you.
At this remark, someone called out to look, and dozens of men piled up in front of the transparent sides of their walkers to see a single soldier clinging onto the side of his transport, his bare antennae whipping around in the wind. Quickly, he got a hold of its rear leg, then slid down it like a fireman’s pole, hitting the ground running and making it off the road and into the blackness before the officers could catch him. At this development, the men realized that a set of armor, a power rifle, and the other assorted knicknacks of a Soldier Caste could easily buy a transport ticket to the countryside, and a cellar in which to hide until there were no more deserter-hunters to hide from.
When the city of Sunsword’s Triumph came into view, a detachment of fifty thousand men had dwindled to forty, and the forty thousand that remained were so demoralized that they could perform as well as five or six thousand hearty soldiers. Hundreds of thousands more were flooding into the city from all over, but this only served to create an enormous traffic jam at the city gates, further expounded by how a mere fraction of those involved actually wanted to be there. Men who had not been paid in weeks were scrabbling and fighting for each other’s rations, and any officer who tried to restore order was just as likely to be robbed as saluted. For the few who could be corralled in the general direction of the revolting districts, they found nothing; in the chaos, the insurgents had simply slipped away into the sewers, and no Soldier Caste could be persuaded to lower themselves into those dark, winding tunnels.
Such was the state of things.