NationStates Jolt Archive

Randur scowled silently into the windswept sky as he paused in his daily walk. He was the oldest living Nenyan; and he hated that he was not in the position that such an honour ought have accorded him.

Most of all, he hated his brother.

Slipping through the forest that surrounded the Imperial Palace had not been easy. SENTINEL-GO towers scoured the area - and he was quite certain that the fact he had gotten past was nothing to do with his own prowess. No, it wasn't. His insider must have created the chink in the armour as planned - or IPG officers would have ripped him to pieces by now. At least, if the stories were true. It was just as likely that the ruthless efficiency of the Imperial Palace Guard was simple propaganda; but somehow, he doubted that.

Slinking silently to the Rear Entrance of the great construction that was the Imperial Palace of Nenya - more than a mile wide from end wall to end wall - he shifted his gait to one of quiet confidence, certain that he would not be challenged. And why would he be? Nobody could get past the SENTINEL-GO towers; this was common knowledge. Security inside the Palace was likely to be lax - or so he had heard.

He moved through the corridors with quiet confidence, only occasionally glancing down at the tiny PDA hidden inside his hand for guidance on direction.

It wasn't a rapid journey, but eventually he came to the vast metal door that he sought. No guards. But why would there be any?

He tapped at the PDA, well aware that he was being watched by the internal security system - and well aware that if he keyed in the wrong combination to the tiny security pad set almost invisibely into the wall, he would be rendered unconscious by the so-called 'flashbang' security system. A series of specifically designed lights and sounds would wash over him, and he would be completely disorientated; IPG officers would come charging...

He realised that sweat was dripping from his forehead, and he wiped it away with a grim smile. His finger - shaking, along with the rest of his hand, which was utterly unacceptable (the shaking stopped at that thought) - pecked the keys that he hoped were the correct ones, in the correct order.

The door groaned.

And slid open-

* * *

Semir-randil paced the distance between the Command Chamber of the IDF High Command Citadel and the entrance to the Tertiary Access Tunnel rapidly. The Vibrating Alert Hip Unit (VAHU) had warned him of a breach of security, and he was just about curious enough to order the IPG off to discover just who had managed to breach the highest security installation in the Empire.

Even more curious was the fact that they had gotten inside the High Command Citadel itself. Perhaps even more curious was that they had known where it was, and had the correct keycode to open the massive door that blocked entrance from the Palace.

He marched the length of the corridor, the IPG converging from several dozen other tunnels with hidden entrances to this, the Tertiary Access Tunnel. The TAT lead from underneath the vast Palace complex into the Citadel itself; but the distance was quite extreme. Nearly fifty miles, to be sure.

This was unimportant, however, thanks to the mag-lev train units that were strategically placed to make the journey all the more rapid. Coming to just one of these units - attached to the wall of the fairly wide and high domed tunnel but sitting at a horizontal angle to the floor - he clambered inside and hit the corresponding code to get to the section of Tunnel that his VAHU informed him the breach was in.

The 'train' shot down the tunnel, covering the distance in a few scant seconds-

* * *

Rialla had been sleeping. She had been dreaming, but, as had often happened of late, she did not recall the dream. She had the sensation that it was important that she did remember-

-but it was elusive. The dream had slipped out of her grasp like a greased pig - the more she clutched at it, the more it had vanished. She had allowed her mind to move onto more important things, when she had realised that she had awoken in the oddest manner.

She blinked the sleep out of her eyes, and wondered at the sensation that had awoken her. It had been similar, she suspected, to the sensation that Humans described as 'someone walking over your grave' - she was not sure what that meant, exactly, as Nenyans did not have experience of that particular phenomenon.

Yet she was disturbed. And for a reason unknown to her, she muttered softly under her breath-

"Semir?"

High Lord Aquinall reclined in the most fantastically comfortable chair aboard his personal Fancy, the Efficiency. He didn't like the name. Yet it had seemed apt for such a thing as an MI aircraft; they were, indeed, efficient. Aquinall was not a flier. He could not pilot an aircraft of any variety; yet he still admired the technological prowess that had produced the beast in which he sat.

He was not going anywhere, in fact. The Rivette-built Fancy simply hovered high above Nenya; waiting.

He hoped the wait would not be in vain. He did not wish to have to flee the Empire; this was his home...

...and the options for sanctuary were few. And quite, quite disturbing. The Imperium, Kalessin... most of the places that were both strong enough and brave enough to shelter a fugitive former member of HMI's Government of the Empire of the Eternal Dawn were far more distasteful than his homeland, Ma-Nenya.

"All the more reason for Quendur to succeed," he spoke softly, to nobody but himself.

All he hoped was that Quendur's boasts were valid. If they weren't... he was a dead Elf, for sure.

[tagged]

Everything had gone exactly as planned.

Randur had expected the security systems to pinpoint his location; he had expected his brother to be so egotistical and arrogant as to be curious enough to discover just who had breached the security grid in order to gain access to the Citadel; and he had expected his brother to come alone.

What he had not expected, however, was his brother's knowledge of just who had breached the security. Apparently, Semir-randil knew Randur was still alive.

No doubt about it; the bastard had felt his presence empathically. Or perhaps telepathically; Nenyan psi prowess was said to increase with age - so there was no way of knowing exactly what he would be facing.

Randur rapidly found out, however...

The train - the mag-lev train - had arrived exactly five seconds ago.

Semir-randil had stepped off of the train...

...and into the path of Randur's fist.

He hadn't been expecting it, which, in itself, was cause for alarm; Semir had always had an inate sense of danger - and it hadn't been sparked this time around. That had concerned him.

Not quite knocked off-balance, Semir had whirled to the side, and, without knowing where his assailant was by sight, had slammed a fist into his opponents midrift.

Randur had staggered back, somewhat winded by the blow; and now the brothers stood, bare feet apart; Semir with a bloodied nose, Randur panting for air.

"You knew it was I," Randur informed Semir in the old and rapid form of Quenya no longer spoken in the Empire except by the Imperial Family itself.

"I did," Semir confirmed, drawing himself up to his full height and staring at his brother with nothing short of an air of absolute superiority, "as nobody but you, brother, would have such a death wish as to attempt to enter the Citadel."

Randur snarled, hurling himself at his brother - it was not an angry charge, although it did appear that way; Semir barely got out of the way of the rapid flurry of fists that reigned down on him - or tried to. Semir delivered a snap-kick to Randur's knee; Randur went down with a grunt, but he rolled back to his feet with alarming rapidity.

Semir backed off somewhat; and the two began to circle each other, hankering down and flexing their fingers as they sized up their options.

Randur watched Semir with an air of confident calm; to a certain extent, Randur had demonized his younger brother - he felt certain that he could handle him easily in personal combat. His brother was lazy, pathetic, to be pitied.

And so when Semir's fists moved faster than his eyes could track and landed blows on either side of his throat, he put the rapidity of the motion down to dumb luck. At least, somewhere at the back of his mind, he did; in reality he was far too busy choking on his own blood. Apparently something had ruptured in his throat; he didn't care. He would kill Semir. He would kill him slowly... and then he would destroy everything that Semir loved. Everything.

None of this was thought of consciously. It was below the surface, hidden by the orgy of agony that washed over Randur - he was aware of a faint prickling sensation at the edge of his mind, and he pushed against it-

-and his mind, his centre, fell back, letting out a silent scream of terror. Impossible! his mind screamed; Semir was...

...a wall. An impenetrable wall of psionic energy had snapped into existance the very instant he had pushed against his brothers mind; it was not possible - Randur had always, always been the more powerful of the two in psionic matters.

"Always," he murmoured - or tried to. He found that blood was blocking his throat, and so he merely rasped an unintelligable sound.

Suddenly his head was spinning, and the ground appeared to rush up towards him; he yelped - gurgled - as his head cracked against the hard stone floor...

He heard a voice. It was not vocal... it was in his mind. Deep inside the recess of his mind, in that private place that nobody ought to be able to touch consciously, not even the owner of the mind in which it makes its home...

I warned you, brother. I warned you that if I saw you again, you would die. You did not listen. You did not grant my desire to prevent this Kinslaying which you force upon me. You did not allow the past to simply be what it is: the past. You did not change, or falter, or follow a new path; you are what you have always been. Yet fear not, brother. Your torment is at an end. Your mind whispers your secrets, your fears, your desires; I know your spirit, and I know whom has aided you. Your little rebellion, your destructive purpose... is at an end.

And deep inside Randur, deep in that place in which Semir had impossibly reached into, two words formed unbidden:

At last...

Consciously, Randur was suddenly aware of only one thing: pain... white-hot pain... pain that filled his body, his mind, his very spirit; instantly his body wracked with the agony that did not truly exist.

He screamed; the blood in his throat was no impediment, for the scream had the full force of the entire contents of his lungs: blood spattered the floor as his lungs ruptured, ripping themselves apart; his heart literally burst in his chest, his organs shutting down...

...but none of it was real; the scream was real, the pain was real, but the facts of the pain, the facts that his dysfunctional mind fed him were illusions from the outside.

And as the pain built to fever pitch, Randur's body flopping and convulsing like a rag doll held on strings and manipulated by one who has no control over their own body, the final loss of dignity came: Randur's body dispensed of the vast proportion of its own fluids. Inside himself, Randur howled at the injustice of it; deeper inside himself, Randur-Self wept with joy at the impending release; and outside himself, Semir-randil wept with sadness at the loss of one he had never loved by his own 'hands'.

Randur's body twitched itself into silence, slowly, surely...

By the time his body lay still, Randur had been dead for some minutes.

By the time the IPG officers finally arrived, Semir-randil lay some feet away, curled into a foetal ball, sobbing silently. There were no tears. With a gentleness that none would have suspected of the IPG Major that lead the team first to arrive on the scene - a grizzled bear of a man with a build and demeanour that demanded respect and threatened to smash anything that got in his way - Major Elrahn Rihad lifted Semir-randil in his mighty paws, cradling the smaller Nenyan, and whispering soft reassuring words with mind and voice. With quiet respect, the rest of the IPG officers turned away; somehow no questions needed to be asked: it was clear, despite the disfigured nature of the mess of death that lay on the floor nearby, that the... thing... was kin to Semir.

No words were required to make it clear just why Semir was so distraught; the IPG men shuddered inside, quivering somewhat on the outside - the place felt wrong, somehow. Dirty. Soiled. It made their spirits feel...

...sickened. Against their will, every single Nenyan takes several steps backwards.

Time passes.

Slowly, Semir returns to himself. Returned to his own feet by the Major - now stoic and unemotional, as opposed to the gentle manner of his expression and movement during Semir's time of weakness - Semir intones...

"Let's get the hell out here."

{Tag; For Future Reading}

Aboard the S.P.S. Durandel, Flag, Third Task Force, Battle Fleet, Sol System, LEO

Running a ground tracking exercise was one of the most hated things that tac officers had to do, but it had to be done. This time, they were tracking the vehicle traffic over the EOTED capital of Nenya.

Its nastily high speed made the work hard, but the computers did most of the work.

And.... That's odd. One of those flying things, sitting stationary. We've been watching for 6 hours, and I haven't seen one do it yet.

Scan tech Voxan reported this to his superior, and and was told to watch it, follow it. Pretend it was a CnC vehicle in a ground campaign. And best of all, don't lose it.

The Fancy sat stationary still. Aquinall had not recieved word from Randur; and, in truth, he feared the worst.

Hours had passed; he had slept a little, but only little naps here or there. Ten minutes apiece, at best; as a result, his amber eyes were red and sore.... he blinked rapidly, attempting to get some fluids into his dry eyes. It didn't work, and he resisted the urge to rub them.

Too long. He had waited too long already - and he decided it was high time he moved.

Lumbering up from his all-too-comfortable seat - with a low grunt - and made his way towards the irised door that lead into the cockpit...

...and as the door irised open, the pilot went out with an alarmed yell.

Fighting to keep the concern out of his voice, Aquinall asked of the pilot not-too-calmly, "What is it?"

"See for yourself," the pilot informed the High Lord in a frightened voice...

...outside, visible through the trimensional viewer, no less than six X#s hung motionless dead ahead. Their gunports irised open...

* * *

"This is Beta Lead, Home Guard Squadron. You are to vacate Nenyan airspace immediately. We will escort you to the Bay of Turath. Comply."

Indir Maller, veteran pilot and all-around hard-ass (or so she liked to think), nodded to herself - as much as was allowed, considering she was strapped into a g-reducing harness and surrounded by perfluorocarbon fluid - as she twitched a finger and cut the communication.

"Acknowledged," the response came.

Maller smiled. She would enjoy this...

...she would enjoy this more than words could possibly describe.

The trip was uneventful; the Fancy complied, and her wing - well, her wing and one other, in fact - escorted the sleek MI craft out to the Bay of Turath, with one brief stopover: the pilot had been allowed to leave the craft, and the Fancy had been guided the remainder of the journey via microwave commands to its AI. There was no chance of escape for Aquinall; and he, she had no doubt, knew it.

Once there, the Fancy hung motionless.

She twitched her finger in the appropriate manner, her finger intersecting a magnetic field line and activating the comms system again on the preset frequency-

* * *

Aquinall, curled into a fearful ball with his legs drawn up and his eyes squeezed tightly shut, feared the worst. And when the woman pilot spoke again, his fear finally passed; the knowledge of the truth of ones fears tends to leave only calm... and he knew where he was going. There was no fear of death, once it was impending, for the High Lord Aquinall; only the fear of pain remained, and even that was a dim shadow of the terror he had felt but moments before.

"High Lord Aquinall," the voice began over the intercraft comm system, "you have been tried and convicted in absentia of numerous crimes. You are guilty as charged, as decided by the Appointed Jury of the Imperial Criminal Court as of 20:18:51. You have been convicted of the following crimes:"

The voice paused. It was clear to Aquinall that she was enjoying this... perhaps a little too much. And slowly, he realised that he knew the voice... he knew her. He could not remember...

It hit him like a bullet to the forehead. He shuddered; he remembered this woman. He remembered her mother; he remembered the day he had walked out from the life he had faked, from the love he had never loved...

His daughter. His daughter would pull the trigger.

Inside, Aquinall began to die, piece by piece. He did not hear the voice announcing his crimes... but it was there, nontheless. All he saw was his daughter, cradled in his arms... all he saw was her mother, sobbing and begging him to stay... all he saw was her mother, dragged out of their home and away, to be executed for breach of Commonwealth Law; a breach that he, Aquinall, had reported.

A breach that had never existed.

His eyes opened as the voice began; torrential rain spiked down from the heavens, visible through the trimensional 'visor. It was as if the sky itself was weeping with pent-up sadness, and the wind - barely audible - sighed around him. His world collapsed into a single point, and that point was the hard voice of his daughter... the daughter that hated him with a passion, and had waited, clearly, for a chance to act on that hate for all these years.

Eru forgive me, Aquinall begged silently.

The voice continued, oblivious to Aquinall's internalized pain... pain he had never allowed himself to feel, but that had impacted his life for all his days since the day that the woman he had never loved had been gutted and hung - not in that order - from the streetlamp outside the tiny cottage in which his daughter had been born.

He had never wept before, had the High Lord Aquinall... but he wished that he could today.

"You are guilty of High Treason; Conspiracy Against the People; Conspiring to Rebel; Conspiracy Leading to Murder; Murder, fifteen counts; Fraud; Grand Fraud; Falsifying Imperial Records; Selling State Secrets to a terrorist organisation; and Attempted Assasination of a member of the High Nobility. These convictions do not carry the right of appeal.

"You are sentenced to death. You are granted fifteen seconds to consider your crimes and repent."

Aquinall stood, quietly. He opened his arms wide...

"I come," he whispered softly...

* * *

The X#s opened fire. Tiny rounds spat forth from their EM-enhanced chainguns, ripping and rending the Fancy to shreds within instants; the choked smoking remains shattering like so many plates falling from a bloodied table at a dinner party gone terribly wrong. The MI core ruptured, flames flicking outwards, highlighting the pouring rain in a rainbow of flickering colours for a single instant; the scene fades to near-darkness, the only light provided by the white-hot flares of electrons spilling forth from the X#s as they turn, silently, and accelerate away towards their home airfield.

With merely a whoosh, the debris of the Fancy descends towards a watery grave...

...a white-hot pulse lights up the sky again as the tough MI core finally ruptures, sending shrapnel splaying outwards; finally, the light fades, and the rain still falls. Night returns to quiet, and the world continues much as it did before - minus one soul-blackened and bitter wretch.