NationStates Jolt Archive


Bitter Idealism [formal intro]

Tenuria
17-02-2007, 04:40
Technically, Raj Danilov wasn't even PEST. What he actually was remained a matter of great speculation. No-one even knew why he'd been posted here, how long he'd stayed, or when he'd leave. Although Danilov wouldn't have been particularly surprised to find out most of them hoped the answer to the last question would be "soon".

There was nothing very mysterious about Danilov, on the surface. He was a tall iron-haired man with lean opaque eyes and a face of angles and ridges, the eyes almost sunken. It was far from a standard Damalg'iru face, of course, but then most of these were 2nd-gens and even the odd 1st-gen, kept in close suspicion of course by the 2nds as well as Danilov and the guards themselves.

The odder matter about Danilov concerned his rarity of speaking. Namely, except to give orders (and he was indisputably one to give orders), he almost never spoke, not even to the other personnel. They had observed that even the highest-ranked officers on the complex deferred to him, on the rare instances when he chose to concern himself in matters.

Even the prisoners were not entirely oblivious to this. Yag'Haroth was, necessarily, a prison as well as a fortress. The prisoners were used sometimes as an impromptu logistics crew, setting up all the dangerous weaponry (and being exposed to the doses of radiation the personnel themselves tried to avoid); sometimes they served as food when rations got low, or served to satisfy the certain sexual needs of their captors. Nonetheless, there was still an intimate grapevine connecting the lowest-ranking personnel to the prisoners, these being mainly 1st and 2nd gens.

Some said Raj Danilov was a Sol-Marius, the dread special forces of the si-Thaluo. Some claimed he was a henchman of the Inquisition. A few even held that he was a Moderator of the Yag'Haroth Oversector, or even a Moderator of the HICOM. Danilov had been confronted once with this last, by a curious officer; he had merely laughed and warned, playfully, the officer not to get mixed in over his head.

The prisoners especially held a peculiar reverence for Danilov, the kind of reverence men have for powerful adversaries or opposing tyrants. Thus, when they decided to break out, they carefully considered his feelings into the matter, and planned their strategy carefully. The prison cells were deep underground, and prisoners were not normally allowed to speak to each other, kept in solitary confinement except for the daily exercise sessions; that started to be when messages were passed along, in a code agreed upon at some unknown point in the past.

They were a mixed bag: intellectuals and political dissidents thrown in alongside petty thieves and criminals, evidently deemed not dangerous enough to be executed. This policy was of course changed after the Yag'Haroth breakout; no longer were the Fortress Islands used as prisons, all prisoners simply redirected to the forced-labour camps in the North, and computer users summarily executed.

But I appear to be getting ahead of myself. The ringleader of our prisoners now was one Amon Hakku, a young man full of brilliance and fiery optimism; he'd been convicted of espionage and treason in the second degree, the usual designations for someone who accessed the Internet from Damalg'iru territory. Since espionage and second degree treason were not considered major crimes at the time, he had been simply imprisoned with a cellmate named Loki Marsden, convicted of the same crime. 'Convicted' wasn't accurate; more 'seized by the Sol-Marii at night, taken to the OVSCOM, informed of one's crime, and doled out an appropriate punishment by an Oversector Sub-Moderator'.

Hakku had planned out the escape in detail. It was not, of course, one that could be easily accomplished elsewhere, and relied largely on the structural details of the building, its age, and running like hell. Hakku had served on other Fortress Islands before his conviction; he knew that all of them contained computers of some variety, usually in private offices. That was all he would need.

Raj Danilov, of course, could well be the fly in Hakku's ointment. Hakku knew this; higher-ranking officials meant more likelihood of capture, more security. But Hakku couldn't well delay much longer. The die, as someone or other once said, is cast. He'd have to make his move soon, or risk losing it all anyway.

* * *

The artificial 'morning' of Day 271, Year 29 failed to dawn. It appeared the night light-sequence had never turned off, even though it was well past Hour 7 now. That was not the only strange thing one might observe upon closer examination of Yag'Haroth Fortress Island. One could see that the prison cells were invariably locked shut, secure, but no-one was within.

The cafeteria and gymnasium were also on this level, far below ground and sea level. Both massive rooms were strewn with blood and bodies. Yag'Haroth had held up to eight hundred prisoners, and most of them lay dead here, 7.8mm caseless and 5.56mm rounds littering the floor and pockmarking the walls. The dead bodies of personnel lay here too, some killed in more gruesome ways; eyes are gouged or scratched out, arms dangling uselessly, bones fractured by heavy wooden or metal implements (the kind one might pick up in a cafeteria or gymnasium), necks broken. A few had been shot, apparently with handguns.

Upstairs the chaos grew deeper. Troops ran to and fro in fists of two and three; armed men massed in corners, bloody dead bodies lying everywhere. Raj Danilov appeared to be sitting in his office, watching the events playing out on several TV screens; he was enjoying himself immensely. Of course, it wasn't his facility to manage, so he hadn't bothered to report any of the phenomena; these were Damalg'iru soldiers, they could figure it out on their own.

Finally, on the third floor, we find the reason for this outcry. A heavily blockaded blast door was ringed by soldiers, shouting and firing upon it with their weapons, holding it until the Sol-Marii could arrive with the heavy weapons from below; around the blast door was a small perimeter of armed prisoners, a number dwindling every moment as more 5.56mm rounds took them down, forming a wall of dead bodies (behind from which the survivors continued to fire indiscriminately upon their attackers, with wild horror).

Behind the blast doors virtually everything had been overturned and pushed against the door except for the computer table and the instrument sitting upon it. Typing furiously at the console was Amon Hakku himself, bleeding from three wounds, bruised and disheveled. A quartet of other prisoners, some armed and some not, guarded him as he typed.

The message was short, and posted as a blog entry.


Help us. You have to help us.

We're from the si-Thaluo Damalg'iru. You haven't heard of it. Far north, probably as close to the North Pole as it's possible to get. Ridiculously massive island of which we occupy only a small southern fraction. That's beside the point, anyway.

The si-Thaluo's been carrying on a quiet program of extermination for the past thirty years, give or take. Extermination of what, you ask? Extermination of everything that makes us human. Individual, free expression is outlawed. Emotions are outlawed. Art, literature, music, media are all outlawed. Non-oral communication is outlawed. Families are outlawed. Sex is outlawed. The punishment? Death, preceded by tortures that would make the Spanish Inquisition cry.

We want sanity back, and there aren't many of us... within ten years the Moderators' breeding program will be complete and us first-generation people will become obsolete. Future generations will have no memory of any of the things that make us human, no humanity at all, just empty shells filled with the hateful propaganda of the HICOM.

I ask the world's citizens to notify your governments. Those of you who can still vote for them, urge them to do something about these monsters. Even waging war against them would be better than watching us suffer in silence.

I'm going to die in a few minutes, probably in a particularly nasty way, so this blog entry won't be updated. At least not by me. Perhaps those few uncaptured Internet users in the si-Thaluo will take heart and continue to update and reinforce this with their own comments and entries.

Thanl;p'
This is all the world outside of the si-Thaluo would ever know on the subject. In his room Danilov watched the ATGM blow in the door, and the extremely brief gun battle before the usefulness of the Sol-Marii's penetration rounds became evident, as the tungsten core penetrated the body and then released its unpleasant combination of ball bearings and anti-coagulants into the wound. He rolled back the camera film and watched the computer screen. It had worked. But that was no obstacle to Danilov's ultimate plans.

Danilov was watching for a specific reason. He was the one who'd "inadvertently" ordered the creation of a chink in the security net. He'd been watching the escape the whole time, without lifting a finger to stop it. Why? Because he knew their plans. He knew they weren't simply running away, seeking their own freedom; no, they were "martyrs", seeking the freedom of all Damalg'iru. And thus, more of an asset than a threat to Danilov himself.

Hakku's head ended up landing on the "return" key, and moments before the Sol-Marii put five 7.8mm rounds through the computer monitor, tower, and modem, tenurianrevolution.blogspot.com/ had been posted. There in cyberspace, converted into an endless string of zeroes and ones, it waited. Waited for someone to download it onto another hard drive, where its numerals could be turned to letters, each letter conveying a stark truth, or a stark falsehood, or perhaps both; for are they really so different in a world where reality is what you make of it?
Tenuria
25-02-2007, 23:05
[Twenty-Five Years Ago]

Hot lead cut the ground like a knife through butter, shards of reinforced concrete bursting like fountains across the room; Inquisitor Theodan Karin followed the fist of Sol-Marii into the chamber, his long robes sweeping almost distastefully over the blood and bone fragments scattered haphazardly across the floor. In the corner of the room there lay Karin’s prey, a bearded man in his mid-forties. He’d been hit by one of the 7.8mm rounds, and now the anticoagulants were spreading throughout his blood. He was bleeding to death and he knew it.

Karin advanced menacingly, the fitted helmet still revealing his vengeful crimson tinted eyes; the crimson from the burning rubble and wreckage that lay everywhere. The man whimpered a little bit, and shrank back in his corner; Karin did not stop until he stood directly over the man, looking down at him with contempt, his black robes seeming to blot out all light in the room.

“So, Mr. Azhinov. We meet at last.”

Apollonius Azhinov grimaced and rose to his feet, bracing himself against the wall from the pain. “Inquisitor, tell me, what do you want?”

Karin was silent for a moment. “Mr. Azhinov, you have committed high treason and war crimes against the Imperium and the si-Thaluo. You were behind the terrorist acts that caused the deaths of the Imperial Family and the Senate. You are hereby sentenced to death.”

Azhinov smiled. “You know perfectly well that I was acting on the ord- urk!”

Karin had grabbed his throat. “This is no time for petty excuses.” With his other hand he injected Azhinov with a combination of blood coagulants and a tranquilizer agent; he would stay alive for the remainder of the procedure. “Come with us.”

Karin moved aside. Four impassive, blocklike men in armoured suits moved in and seized Azhinov with black-gloved hands, dragging him out of the room. Karin glanced at the bodies on the floor for a moment; probably sympathizers, or innocents; it was no concern of his. He followed the Sol-Marii downstairs.

They had formed a ring in one of the Inquisition’s heavily soundproofed, ritually desanitised chambers. A collection of equipment was gathered around the central table, in turn equipped with straps and other controls. Karin issued a few curt orders to the Sol-Marii, who stripped Azhinov of his clothing and dumped him down on the table, and strapped him in securely. Azhinov was then injected with a stimulant to bring him back to consciousness.

Karin’s face was masked and in shadow, with the only light a hard fluorescent one off to Azhinov’s left. As those eyes opened, he blinked a few times; Karin forced his eyes into the light and then with the aid of a nail and a heavy board removed his right ear. Faced with the light, Azhinov tried to close his eyes; Karin consequently removed his eyelids as well. The pain was only just starting, however, as the victim’s tongue was pulled out by the roots as well, causing his mouth and nose to fill with blood.

Karin moved down from the head now, making an incision in the sternum with a sulfur-encrusted chisel, which he then brought down directly on the exposed solar plexus ganglion. This in turn caused an intimate network of pain to blossom throughout Azhinov’s upper body; the Inquisitor carefully chiseled off the fingernails, eventually divesting them and much of the surrounding flesh from the body. Further diverting pursuits involving the ganglion behind the elbow and the two bones of the forearm occupied the Inquisitor for a minute or so more; Azhinov was starting to lose consciousness (partly from the blood loss and pain, partly from choked breath from screaming so much), and a Sol-Marius stepped up and injected him with the stimulant again.

Karin favoured the Sol-Marius with a fatherly smile and motioned to him to continue. The Sol-Marius considered for a moment, giving Azhinov a brief respite (Azhinov would be pleading for mercy had he not been forced to eat his own voice box a few minutes ago). Then the impassive soldier lifted Azhinov bodily and slammed him down on his stomach. Picking up a keen knife, he dipped it in the sulfur and then proceeded to remove the skin from Azhinov’s back. Then he flipped Azhinov over and strapped him back in, the exposed nerve endings on his back suffering double with no skin to protect them. The Sol-Marius turned a switch; powered by some unknown source below, the table began to heat up, slow-cooking Azhinov alive.

It was only when it became obvious that Azhinov was about to die that Karin stopped the table, leaving areas of Azhinov’s flesh melded with the metal; he unstrapped the prisoner (there was no chance of his actually leaving the room or table, as his will was long since broken) and painfully separated him from the table with which he had become one, with the assistance of the chisel and knife again. Some hatch then opened before the table, and Karin flipped a switch, causing the table to rotate ninety degrees to be totally vertical.

The unfortunate prisoner slid down from the table into a deep hole; he landed, in darkness, on something very sharp. Brief investigation revealed that he was seated atop some kind of perforated metal surface: razor-sharp blades of steel on the floor alternated with holes about twelve centimeters across. He was sitting on what looked like a giant cheese grater.

Then he looked up to see the massive concrete block coming down.

The largest piece of Apollonius Azhinov that survived intact was, coincidentally, about twelve centimeters across.

Shortly after this incident, Inquisitor Theodan Karin was involved in a bizarre accident involving the grater. His remains were not recovered, as the contents of the “bowl” below the grater are periodically burned following interrogations. The Sol-Marius who had accompanied him and assisted with the interrogation of Azhinov abruptly disappeared as well, although he had merely changed his name.

Lieutenant Colonel Raj Azhinov took the masculine form of his mother’s maiden name and became Raj Danilov. He rose in the ranks of Sol-Marii to gain a position so remote and obscure that most people had only a dim idea of its connotations. He was, of course, unhappy that his father had to be killed; but we all need to make sacrifices sometimes. That was his.

Naturally, Danilov had had his connections long before gaining his current position; it was for that reason that no full-out investigation into the death of Inquisitor Karin had taken place. But Danilov didn’t consider it exactly fair: He’d been through all this, served the si-Thaluo immaculately, and now he had to obey Thane Darlash’s insane whims? He deserved compensation for what he’d had to do, the compensation Darlash had told him he’d have for handing over his father. He wanted absolute power... wanted the position of Deus-Imperator for himself.

* * *

[Present Day]

Danilov flipped a switch and sighed imperceptibly. He wasn’t sure he wanted to do this, but doubtless the Sol-Marii and Inquisition were already onto the newly posted website and would be after his ass if he didn’t do something about it. Of course, there was little chance he’d be believed, but he was fortunate: the opening post had been written in a hurry, and thus made claims outlandish to anyone not familiar with the si-Thaluo itself.

Nonetheless, he had a job to do, and he double-clicked his Web browser and had swiftly entered the website in question. He could just shut it down, but the Internet servers saved mirrors of the site elsewhere, and doing so would only appear to be proving the dissident’s point. Thus, he would post the traditional denial, then request that it be shut down by the administrators of the website—the way most people do.

The government of the si-Thaluo Damalg’iru wishes to apologise on behalf of the deluded individual(s) who posted this libelous material. The claims made are patently false, as should be evident; this appears to have been a malicious and deliberate prank by certain misguided individual(s), who have been dealt with accordingly. We would like to request that the administrators of this website shut down this blog and prevent copies from resurfacing elsewhere, as it is in violation of Damalg’iru law (Article 174.5 of the Damalg’iru Civil Law, which states: ‘Any individual or group of individuals, who employs, either in speech or in writing, scurrilous, malicious, false, or obscene language regarding the government of the si-Thaluo, or government officials, is guilty of the crime of sedition; the penalty for this crime is the same as that administered for libel (q.v.), except a fine of not less than ƒ5,000 and not more than ƒ20,000 may be added to the penalty at the discretion of the sentencer.’)

Danilov had, of course, double-checked his law against the libel and sedition laws in other nations’ online constitutions; nevertheless, he couldn’t help thinking that the wording might be suspect. Probably just paranoia, he reflected, hitting the send button.