11. Questions of Faith

Luci's Bar finally emptied of the Degraded, the Ammatar General Inspector and his prisoner, who was now being led away secure in manacles and chains. Zayard breathed in the cold desert air, the breeze hinting at a sandstorm in the morning. For now he looked out through the door to the settlement and the ships about to lift off. All was quiet outside, the buzz of the ronin's actions having been the most controversy since the whole affair started.

Galactic war averted for the time being, an Amarri Heir protected from disclosure about his ancestors past efforts to help the Matari agenda, hell, it had been one busy week. He closed the door, and was about to turn off the lights.

"Where are they taking her?"

He spun, face to face with the second ronin he had ever seen in his life, the one who arrived after the death of the ensign, the one with the fiery red hair.

He blinked, and then blinked again. She seemed more familiar than she should have been. He felt he knew this woman, but as he tried to answer her question, a shape separated from the ronin. Behind and away from her, another woman with the same long, beautiful red hair stepped into the light. They were different as soft and hardpan dirt, but he thought he was looking into a distorted mirror for all he could separate the two.

"Where are they taking her?" The other one asked.

"I . . . I, well she gave herself up."

The two took his arms, leading him into the back. He moved with purpose or they would surely have dragged him on his knees. "She gave herself to the Inspector. She said she killed the Amarri, and also said she was the terrorist who set those ships to burning in Sehmy."

"She is that person," the one said, the two women circling him as they stood in the bar's storage area. "We are also that person," the second woman added.

"I don't know what that means," Zayard replied, "But she gave herself up. They are probably going to take her to the Ministry of Internal Order."

That statement caused hesitation in their circling, but only for a moment. "To be tortured as an example to other terrorists. Would seem to be a double edged blade."

"Yes, they . . " Zayard began.

"They know the Matari might take her torture and death as yet another reason to continue terrorist action." The first woman continued. "But that's a general threat, and one easily kept from escalating into something more. Especially now that the Amarri eyes are firmly toward the Tetrimon."

Zayard didn't move, just answered their questions about the Inspector, the Degraded, and revealed to them the problems for the mysterious Heir caused by the news of the Rona Paratwa being awakened. Turning herself in might have averted a war, at least temporarily, this the two women had gathered on their own, but he finished by telling them of the Seven Khumaak of the U'Maak'akee.

The two red haired women talked, each switching to the other to finish sentences, a feat of linguistic legerdemain that made Zayard dizzy. He was truly beginning to wonder if he was talking to two people or just one.

"And sending her to the Ministry would help squelch . . ."

". . . any further talk of ronin, or the Seven Khumaak . . . "

". . . or anything that had to do with the Amarri Heir being . . ."

". . . involved. Clever to put her in the hands of the branch of secrets."

Zayard tried to break their dizzying voices. "Perhaps too, because this unknown Heir might have better access to the ronin for his or her own purposes."

He waited for a moment, breathing hard now as they had stopped their predatory circling, coming to stand directly behind him. He waited for the knife or bullet, but after a moment he turned. The bar was empty.

He took the time to sweep the sand into a pile on the floor, which always helped to calm his thoughts. It didn't seem to be working today, but he knew why and accepted the whole series of events. A woman had come in and dropped off the head of the Amarr ensign. That had been Gaelbhan Wulf, a ronin of the Paratwa, former Dean of the Republic Military School Extension. And if the news be true, one of the surviving Matari of the Sehmy uprising.

Then another woman appeared, a red haired ronin who wanted to know about the Rona Paratwa. He had pointed her to the malinite outcroppings surrounding the Mounts of Amake'Son. Hardly a few hours went by and out of the sky dropped a probe, followed by Amarr punishers. In all his years tending bar here in the backworlds, he had never seen so much happen within the space of a week.

Of course, an old fool that he was, he opted to go salvage what was left of the probe. Instead he found a bunch of dead Amarr littering up the place. No ronin that time, thanks to Matar. The first Ammatar inspector and his supervisor died, by his hands, after being confrontational and otherwise unruly. More murders of expediency than of resentment, he admitted, then chuckled. Yeah, he actually hated the Ammatar Inspector and his Amarri supervisor enough to murder them. No use denying it.

He had been just about to jump this planet, and the Degraded made an appearance. It made sense now why they had come, mainly because they believed the rumors and glitzy news stories about the wakening of the Rona Paratwa. Those two tribes, for that's what they were really, had history working together to help keep the Matari and the Amarr from just obliterating each other. Of course, that was a common occurrence then as it was now. Their efforts just helped soothe the ripples of one plot of a thousand such schemes.

Now, Gaelbhan Wulf, a known terrorist and ronin, was on her way to be tortured at the hands of the Ministry. The Amarr of the branch were secretive bastards, and anything they extracted from her would stay there in those cells. No one outside those few would know that an Heir had helped the Matari underground survive, or that symbols that could instantly galvanize the terrorists into outright butchery of all Amarr were still around, somewhere. Hidden. He hoped they would stay hidden.

He sat down at the nearest table, trying to keep his thoughts in order. A face kept flashing in his head of a beautiful woman, maybe a year ago now, a face he wanted to forget but could not. Combined with the increasing problems of Amarr interference, Ammatar inspectors, ronin, Degraded, hell, pick something and it was a problem -- he just couldn't let this go without some effort. He was surprised that this image meant so much to him -- with all that just happened, why was he thinking of her?

He looked up, eyes wide, chilled. The woman he had encountered a year ago, that face in his mind that just wouldn't go away -- the face of the red haired ronin! Or rather the first red haired ronin. Yes, definitely her, the one with a face of rage, he knew her.

On a mission for the People's Front, he and some gang-mates had come across Angels traversing the Hed. After gunning them down, he retrieved their cargo and found a sealed clone hibernation tank. Logs indicated the Angels were simply transporting the tank, origination and destination unknown -- but transporting it for the Amarr, though whether for a corporation or the government they didn't learn.

He had helped open the tank, and she was inside. He slapped himself as he realized the connection. How could he have missed recognizing her? Of course, she looked quite a bit different now with her face so full of intensity. Quite different from the sleeping woman in the tank.

She wasn't a clone as he knew it, but rather the result of an Amarr project. He felt dizzy again. It was hard to keep the two women apart in his head.

Yes, the ronin who had come looking for the Rona Paratwa several weeks ago, she was the woman who had been in the tank. That much he kept clear. He cut away the thoughts of war and the Seven Khumaak, everything he could to concentrate on the red haired woman. When they opened the tank, and he first saw her, he felt cold inside like he felt now thinking about it.

The woman with the face of rage was a ronin, and also the creation of some breeding project by the Amarr . . .

**

The General Inspector moved to the back of the cabin aboard the passenger ship, Censor Seven. "We are inbound to Sehmy, and will expect transport for the prisoner at Emperor's Station," he said to a guard, who turned away to make the report via a comm-interlink. The Inspector’s prisoner sat in the farthest seat, feet and hands locked together and tethered to the deck. Nearly stripped of her clothing, the guards had searched her thoroughly, roughly treating the prisoner as they would any terrorist - irregardless of being a terrorist with the conscience to not bring two races to the point of all out war.

"I will be transferring you to the Ministry."

She said nothing, simply sitting on the seat. He took her hair and pulled her face up so he could see into her eyes. "They will torture you for weeks, and then publicly execute you in the most painful manner of our times. Say something."

Still nothing, but she did look into his eyes. He let go of her hair, but she continued to look on him. She wore her hair in the fashion of Matari whose parents had perished; one half of it shaved away, a testament of her commitment to retribution for their deaths.

"No doubt they will keep the fact that you are ronin a secret from the public. They probably won't believe what you say anyway during your interrogation.

"Amarr interrogations aren't about information," she said, finally speaking, her voice light despite the horrors about to be brought on her.

"You have already confessed. It will be to satisfy their own lust for power and to prove to God that they are the Willing and the Faithful."

She turned a little, the restraints keeping her well secured however. "I imagine they already know that I am one of two who survived the Sehmy uprising."

The General Inspector leaned back, rubbing his chin. Ah yes, the Sehmy uprising. If anyone had any hope that she might suffer only a little before being put to death, they were mad. "Your public display of the uprising on GalNet didn’t go unnoticed." He spoke of the holovid recording she and Airgoidh had located, and then publicly aired on GalNet some time ago. The Republic’s reaction was to calm the masses, and the Amarrians, to deny it all.

"Docking request accepted," the voice chimed. The Inspector let his prisoner sit in silence as he watched her steadiness. A ronin, a Matari whose existence and soul were intertwined in a destiny he had become embroiled within - where would he be tomorrow after he turned over his prisoner? Sitting at his desk, looking through the standard crime reports? And her? Likely languishing away in the Ministry's cells. As a terrorist, she would have no rights, not even those afforded prisoners of war. Some of the things he heard and had seen done to terrorists seemed outright . . . pre-Eve.

**

Darkness.

Chain links clicking together, the toughest titanium known, stronger even than hardened Tempest hull.

Chain that held her down, heavy.

The cell was not more than three meters by three meters, with no window or light source. Cold metal on the walls chilled her bare spine, and cold metal on the floor underneath her bare feet made her shiver.

The Septum Collar kept her head from turning, and the thick metal weighed her shoulders down, despite the partial back support and chest brace. Sharp points jutted from the Septum upward along the back of her head and outward from the two prongs on either side of her temples. Thick wrist shackles kept her hands close to the floor, although mostly from weight as a somewhat lengthy bit of chain ran from her wrists to a bolt in the wall.

She rubbed her arm where the guards had injected her with some solution, poison. She could feel it working in her body, and her mind was often clouded. Her connection to her Paratwan sisters felt muddied.

She kept her eyes closed, knowing the door would open momentarily. The bright light outside the door was painful, especially after all this time in the dark. She did not know how much time she had spent in the cell, but her hair had grown a few inches longer.

A lot of time.

The door opened. She squeezed her eyes more tightly shut, listening as the Amarr entered with a chair. He sat down just as he always did, the chair straddling the opening of the cell. She rocked back and forth a moment, gaining momentum in order to stand. He waited while she stood, the Septum forcing her into a stance without grace. She held her hands up over her breasts, the clothing provided barely adequate.

Today, all the typical things were happening as they had since she first arrived. If she hadn't stood, he would have used the lance . . . her lance, until she passed out. She had begun to cooperate slowly after a dozen blasts from the lance, but just to stand as he directed. Nothing more. To hell with the bastard.

Only after a moment more did she open her eyes to the light. She realized that things weren't always as they had been, for another person, just a shape in the light, stood behind her interrogator. She looked down on the man in the chair now. His appearance always startled her, dressed in drab gray with only a long streak of red down the right arm - Ministry, but of some special branch. His name was Daison, and she knew him. He was the son of her former Amarri owner, the son of Josin Kador. He looked just as he always had, young and boyish. Unlike most of the Amarr, he was handsome.

"Hello sister," he said. "Shall we begin again?"

cont...