Cardinal Mar Dak pouted in her new chambers. She was unaccustomed to the spartan accommodations a military installation such as Bavel had to offer. The opulence of her palace with its android slaves and spacious chambers had been replaced with a cramped room with a simple sleep pod and desk. Just one of the many things she sorely missed from her position with Microtech.
No matter. A small setback. Victory lay in knowing when to strike. Patience was the ultimate virtue, the ultimate conduit to power, and she knew her time would come.
Prajma sat on a simple wooden stool in the corner of the room, wordlessly watching the Cardinal, her hands folded carefully on her lap. Mar Dak considered the girl for a moment.
She had been assigned to Mar Dak since her previous ward, Haldi, had come of age. She missed the boy. Despite his awkward gate, he had been a great help to her. Cunning and shrewd, he had learned to anticipate her needs before she herself recognized them.
Above all, he had been discrete, a necessity for the game Mar Dak played. And, of course, she had seen to it that his discretion and ambition had been rewarded. Years from now, her investment in the boy would pay tremendous dividends. She was sure of it.
She had yet to find a use for Prajma.
“Tell me, girl,” she said after a few moments. “Why did you join the order?”
Prajma’s eyes didn’t leave her hands. “My parents sold me to the Syndicate.” Her voice shook. “They forced me to do things…” She trailed off, letting the words hang for a moment before continuing. “I decided that if my life and body did not belong to me, then they should belong to the Five.”
Mar Dak sighed. A true believer. The girl was useless to her.
“Cardinal,” Quat said. “Pope Antiochus wishes to speak with you.”
No doubt to gloat, she thought bitterly, to see me wallowing in my new surroundings.
“Put him through.”
The Pope’s swollen, pasty cheeks filled her HUD.
“Hello, Cardinal,” he greeted her cheerfully as he cracked the exoskeleton of the chittering devil mantid, sucking down the yellow mucus that poured from the creature’s abdomen as it screeched.
A shudder ran up her spine as Mar Dak struggled to remember a time when she had spoken with the Pope and he had not been eating. “How are you enjoying your new surroundings?” he asked, licking the yellow slime that dribbled down his chin.
“They’re just fine,” she answered. “Thank you for the opportunity to serve.”
Pope Antiochus gave her a curt nod. “I read your report on the retest of the young girl. How confident are you in the new reading?”
“Completely. We took enough samples to retest three times, using a different alter each time. The new prophecy is accurate.”
The Pope nodded his head as he slurped on the end of one of the mantid’s legs. “Good. That is good.”
“As I suspected, the previous alter must have had some faulty code. The Techno-priests have wiped the databanks, and re-installed the genetic prophecy system.”
He grunted his approval between wet gulps.
“We’re also in the process of retesting any students who had been tested using the same alter. Thankfully, the number is relatively small.”
“I can see the Five were wise to trust you with such an important job.”
She bit her lip, suppressing her sharp response.
“I live to serve the Five, your Holiness,” she answered, bowing deep.
Pope Antiochus smiled. “And what of the girl?”
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Cardinal Mar Dak shrugged. “What of her?”
“Has she seen the faulty prophecy?”
“No. She knows nothing of it.”
“And has the prophecy been destroyed?”
“Of course. I saw to it myself.”
“Good,” he said, picking his teeth absentmindedly with one of the sharp claws of the devil mantid he had so noisily devoured. “I want the girl broken.”
“Your Holiness?”
“I’m not sure what was confusing about my request,” he said. Mar Dak reflexively bowed deeper. “I want you to break the girl.”
“Forgive me, your Holiness, please enlighten me. Why do you want this girl broken?”
“There have been several leaks from the Church Archives over the last year,” he answered, cracking another devil mantid open; the creature squealed and clawed helplessly at his fat fingers. Licking his thumb, he continued. “I trust you’ve deleted the prophecy from the archive, but who knows what happened to that data in the meantime.”
She nodded her head. He was not as stupid as he appeared. “If word of the errant prophecy got out, some of our less faithful members might find themselves nurturing the seeds of doubt.”
“Would it not be simpler to have her killed?” she asked.
“And make a her martyr?” He shook his head, his bloated cheeks waggled. “No, a living savior who is an abject failure will be much more useful than a sainted dead one.”
“As you wish.”
“Cardinal, I am trusting you with this task. Do this for me, and your next appointment is yours to choose.”
She bowed low. “I am unworthy.”
He laughed, yellow mucus spraying from his mouth. “I certainly hope not. If you are, I have grossly misjudged your capabilities.”
She bowed low again as Pope Antiochus disconnected the channel.
A smile spread across her face like the dawn of a new day. She had been wrong. He was not punishing her. He was trusting her with an important assignment.
She straightened her back and paced, her mind racing. This was an unexpected turn of events. She needed to think.
Her aglets danced as she dug through her data-files until she found it. The encrypted prophecy. If Pope Antiochus was this concerned about the girl, and about what the defunct prophecy said, she’d have to keep a copy on hand. No telling how it could come in handy.
She made three copies, and spread them out across her storage backups.
“Quat. Send me the files on Aubrey Ryelle.”
“Right away.”
Mar Dak’s HUD filled with archival photographs, the results and analysis of her entrance and placement exams, detailed information on her father, David, and surveillance footage of Aubrey as she worked and studied.
She ran her tongue along the spiked tips of her fanged mouth. Her tongue lingered over a tooth she had broken in her youth, swimming through the deep trenches of submerged city of Pannotia on her home world, Silvanus. The gleaming ancient coral walls that made up the city’s superstructure were a maze of calcification.
Her cold demeanor and calculating intelligence had made it difficult to make friends as a child, so she had spent much of her carefree youth in isolation, exploring the city’s hidden pathways.
She stared at the video feed of Aubrey as she worked, laughing with her friends. They were not dissimilar, she and the girl. Both were precocious, smarter than their peers, driven to succeed. And now this child would be reduced to rubble to fan the flames of the vain ambitions of a Cardinal.
“I have done such horrors in the name of a religion I don’t even believe,” she said to no one in particular.
“Your Eminence?” her A.I. said tentatively.
“Tell me, Quat, am I an evil person?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Of course you do.”
“Good and evil are biological concepts, your Eminence. Morality is simply the artificial construct whereby a society organizes the chaos of life. It is, for all real intents and purposes, meaningless.”
Her tongue continued to probe the rough edge of her broken tooth.
“As such, there is no objective measurement by which I can answer your question. What is deemed evil by one society might be perfectly reasonable to another.”
“That does not answer my question.”
“I am sorry I have not been more helpful.”
She sighed.
“If I may,” Quat continued. “Perhaps the question you truly need to answer is, do you think you are evil?”
“I’m not sure I even know what that means anymore.”
“Then perhaps, in the final analysis, it simply does not matter.”
He was right of course. What was one more casualty in her personal war for power? One more body on the long trail that led to the white crown. And this girl, this supremely ordinary girl, was unlucky enough to have unwittingly become a stumbling block on her path.
Her course was set. It was far too late to change her ways now. She would continue to ignore the nagging voice at the back of her head, filled with guilt and regret. She’d done it for so long now it had almost become second nature. These moments of doubt had been a common theme in her early days as an ambitious and brutal arch-bishop. But now, they were rare occurrences.
She laughed, shaking her head at her momentary weakness. Breaking the girl would be difficult; she was stubborn, strong willed. It would take time, but the great secret Cardinal Mar Dak had learned during her years in service to the Five was that everyone had a pressure point. Something that, if squeezed at just the right time, with just the right amount of force, would destroy them.
“Bring me the schematics of the Jugger they are building,” she said.
“Right away, your Eminence.”
The girl was kind. Some would call that a weakness, but Mar Dak knew it could also be a tremendous source of strength. She scanned through the details of the Jugger, its structural faults. First she’d test the girl’s mettle with guilt.
A wicked smile spread across her fanged face as she formulated her plan. This might be easier than she thought.