The Withered Land, THE EMPIRE FALLS: HELL'S AVATAR

HELL'S AVATAR -- PART NINE

The mask also hid the fact that her mouth was little more than a ragged, lipless, roseate slash in the flesh below the finely-formed, exquisite symmetry of her nose, that barely covered the pointed teeth of a meat-eating carnivore.

Though she had been born of the noble, upper-class Cid'Ammar peoples, the physical mutation that forced her to breathe through an auto-purifying, particulate-filtering positive airway pressure mask made her an unwilling member of Teshiwahur's small and controversial Yur'seyn'Ahktar class. The Yur'seyn'Ahktar were composed of individuals who were classified as Other-humans or Mutants or Gene-altered Humankin. In proper Teshiwahurian Noble Society, the Yur'seyn'Ahktar were only barely tolerated, unofficially considered just one step above the Untouchables of the lowly Harityun. Nobility looked upon those who were Other-human or mutant as blameless for their disfigurement or genetic deviances, but considered them nonetheless as somewhat impure or unclean.

Tanzamia Clariq, the Royal Dame of the rover-city of Bur'heddam, was not understanding, nor at all forgiving, of such social intolerance.

She was the daughter of a rebellious military conqueror and had been given a Royal title from among the Emperium's Monarchical Orders of Chivalry. She had caught the eye of the World-Father, His Imperialness Draggyn Han'Khainus-Galorketh, at the Reclamation and Unification Ceremonies following the annexation of the southern continent of the Kingdom of Kiroth. She was due a great deal more than mere tolerance from her culture's barely literate, weak-willed, talentless Blue Bloods.

And she was certainly deserved of more than utter ineptitude and complete failure from those who were privileged to serve under her command.

She'd lost fourteen highly-trained warriors in that failed gambit at Annet Galjeshir without obtaining her objective. Such men were not easily replaced. She would damn well learn the reason why and she would damn well see it put to right.

There was a light, insistent knock at her chamber door. It was her handmaid, a tiny and fragile woman named Teraoni'i, who entered past the doorway with a quick, small bow.

"The Gauntlet have gathered, as you requested. They wait in the parlor of the Great Chamber," she said.

Tanzamia nodded and dismissed the woman with an imperious wave. She squared her shoulders and strode purposefully out from her stateroom, moving with accustomed serpentine grace out amid the flow of many and diverse members of her Inner Court who were dutifully setting about the myriad tasks she'd assigned them.

Bur'heddam had been built inside the hardened exoskeletal carapace of a massive, stout-bodied, desert-dwelling insect of the beetle family Scarabaeidae ,commonly called a "Kolyoptux". The beetle was as long as four sea-going galleons, and wide as one of those ships was long. The six-legged creature was five stories tall. Ancient bio-builders had cybernetically hijacked the insect, hollowing out its insides except for a rudimentary endocrine system to keep its exoskeleton and flesh alive and they kept a primitive nervous system to allow its twin brains to coordinate the movement of its legs and manage fluid distribution throughout its segmented thorax and abdomen. A superstructure of light, but sturdy flexible metal ran under the exoskeleton and an interconnected framework of connected biospheres filled the remainder of the beast's interior cavity. Interior lighting and electrical power came from a multi-coiled lightning machine that ran the length of the exoskeleton. Dry, contaminant-free air was generated courtesy of a series of a dozen air gas generators with circulators and a system of filtered scrubbers.

The population of Bur'heddam was composed of Pre-Wound, Pre-Long Death survivors from formerly warring nomadic tribes and refugees from other territorial wars, all banding together to create a new culture within the voluminous interior of the cyborg-scarab. The population of the wandering city was never allowed to grow beyond its renewable resources, so usually there were only forty-three hundred or so citizens living within it at any one time. The city was orderly, a surprisingly clean and starkly decorated and furnished, self-contained habitat. The advantage of living inside the creature was one of mobility, allowing the entire city to rove the Forever Plain and The Wastes with relative impunity, without fear of predation by Man or by Nature and the sustenance of a sense of separateness from the sheep-like masses who lived under the somewhat oppressive yoke of the mighty Emperium.

The city had existed for over two hundred and twenty solar orbital cycles.

None of the miracle of that was on Tanzamia Clariq's mind, though, as she entered the Great Chamber to meet with the representatives of the mysterious and sinister Guild of Black Gauntlets.

The leader of the contingent was a taciturn, monkish man of imposing stature who called himself "Aff'Zeqabbah", which was an ancient Primocracy term meaning "Messenger". Accompanying him were the Guildsmen Kos'viggat-Ordinous, Chyremdi-Ordinous and Lal'Pleing-Numinous. The Guildsmen were Synthabots, synthetic cybernetic autonomous robots, as indicated by their name-suffixes; "Ordinous" being a suffix referring to their mathematical position in a series of similar cybernetic-android models, and "Numinous" being a suffix for those cybernetic-androids that were systemically and mathematically singular and individualistic. Aff'Zeqabbah, meanwhile, was very much an organic, human-born citizen under the Emperium, although he was descended from the genetically-deviant Yur'seyn'Ahktar.

Qeskan Wa'entrud, Gaddezos Hu'riem, and Rentro Bacsille were standing together at the opposite corner of a marble-topped, pentagonal-shaped conference table while the Magistrate and Ambassador Czuek stood on either side of the sky-glare streaming through an oval observation portal, their backs to the other people in the room, as Dame Tanzamia Clariq entered the chamber.

The entire group of men executed courtly bows, with Qeskan Wa'entrud muttering the salutation "My lady, you grace us with your attention."

Ambassador Czuek stared icily at her. It was clear that he was annoyed she was taking up so much of his time with the type and variety of mundane negotiation details he'd much rather delegate to clerks and records-keepers. He was a career diplomat who had long ago convinced himself he was some kind of a visionary, always focused on the larger picture in the scheme of things, and above involving himself in the structured specificity of legal contracts.

Tanzamia Clariq considered him to be mostly useless except for the signature he could provide when ratifying official documents.

"What will it take for us to get this idiot 'Warhound' Kaustille's feud with that peasant Freq'maneshii chieftain Grazinh off the table? There are so many more important, much more pressing topics for us to cover... Ideas, gentlemen? We don't need a range-war destabilizing what little order there is here," she said without preamble as she took her seat at one of the pentagonal table's points.

"Find out who their seconds-in command are. Assess their ambitions and whether or not we can work with them. Then co-opt them either through some modest bribery or through blackmail and, ultimately, assassinate both Kaustille and Grazinh, letting their newly-corrupted seconds take over --- under our control, of course," Qeskan Wa'entrud offered.

The other men in the chamber nodded their assent. The idea was simple and inexpensive, not requiring the depletion of overmuch in the way of either personnel resources, weaponry or money.

"And how long will that take? Not especially long, I hope," Tanzamia said, weighing the idea.

"A few days at best," Qeskan said. "Half a heliar at most."

"And if they are loyal men and relatively incorruptible? If they won't go for this bribery?" she asked.

"We use our sear-cannons and our mechanized sky-cavalry to put them both to route, attacking each equally. Neither of them have the technological weaponry to stand up to a bombardment from this mobile city's artillery nor from the armored aerial legion," Rentro Bacsille said.

"Or, may I suggest, if these battling buffoons cannot be unseated via the plan before this committee, we simply use the pressurization siphons to emit a cloud of weaponized Caustic Vapors to blanket their military encampments, taking advantage of this territory's natural dawn winds?" Gaddezos Hu'riem offered.

"That might indeed be the way to go," Qeskan said with grudging approval. "A far stealthier solution."

"You all do realize I cannot officially participate in developing these kinds of options as a way to settle territorial discord, don't you?" the Ambassador said. "Nor can I condone their execution."

Tanzamia gave the Ambassador a dismissive glare. "You needn't worry. In all honesty, we're not even speaking with you, yet," she said.