Chapter 8

8.

Ambrozy could not get over the peculiar case of Dolustea. The people living here indeed where the primitive and dirty monkeys were supposed to be according to reports Yuri had read and snatched from the storage of the ministry of records, but the observers had not noticed the connections these aboriginals had made with the pirates and other unsavory inhabitants of the galaxy. Besides their own language, they spoke the standard common tongue a bit with a very heavy accent, having learned that when conducting business with the visitors so Ambrozy could find out about their history: Several decades ago, a bunch of pirates had landed here in order to hide and they had made contact with the locals, enslaving a few of them as servants, the rest running away into the many deep caves that apparently littered the surface of the whole planet. From these captives they found translucent crystals that the locals ground up and put into a tea they made from certain plants that grew in the midst of the reeds. This substance proved to be a very strong psychedelic and the pirates found it extremely enjoyable and knew that it was a business opportunity when they saw one. However, forcing the aboriginals to make the brew and gather the necessary ingredients proved to be impossible since the pirates had no resources to scour the vast underground networks of the caves and the locals considered the captives as dead so they did not answer to ransom demands either. So a trade deal of sorts was arranged, and the aboriginals got modern weapons and armor and they were helped to rig up a system that could charge the batteries those weapons needed. The generator was found in a basement under one of the buildings.

Ambrozy was also surprised how devious the aboriginals were. Once the expedition had bested them during the second attack, they had realized the advantage the drone flying above the expedition gave to their enemy. The mortars had been aimed to take it out since they now knew that they could not really damage the enemy via conventional attacks and the whole battle had basically been an attempt to set up the night time ambush. The uniforms the ambushing soldiers had been using were made of cloth that scrambled the standard cameras and binoculars and the movement of the wearer could not be seen, rendering the soldiers almost invisible. Even if the drone had been still up and running, it really would have not helped to spot these men at all. This equipment definitely was something that these people should have not had access to.

Another funny thing was that they had absorbed some of the basic tenets and concepts of the Cult of Kai from the pirates. The church or temple they had in the center of the village was mostly dedicated to the same deities as in the empire and their main god really was the emperor they knew nothing about, but all of it had melded with their own religion so you couldn't necessarily recognize the familiar images in their paintings and statues. The biggest statue in the church depicted a man holding a book and a tall staff, the symbols of the emperor, but the figure otherwise lacked the rest of the correct elements. Ambrozy wasn't much into art, but he rather enjoyed the paintings of the aboriginals, as they seemed primitive but at the same time nuanced and rich in meaning. Ambrozy wondered if it was because the paintings had splendid colors and everything else on this god forsaken planet was so drab and gray. It must have not been easy to procure the paints like this on Dolustea, so maybe the surrounding society and world really underlined the effort and dedication these people had wanted to put into these pieces. At any rate, they were very nice.

In the back of the village there was a stone building that was clearly separated on purpose from the other houses. The soldier of the expedition had thus far left it alone, somehow just missing it from the looting and butchering they had done in the village center before they calmed down from their worst blood lust. Now that the situation for the expedition had finally stabilized and the mining could finally start in earnest, there wasn't much to do besides waiting so Ambrozy went to investigate the stone building by himself. He took a pistol with him and put the exoskeleton and its armor on just to be on the safe side, but he really didn't believe that there would be anyone there to put up a fight. The front door of it was locked and Ambrozy had to kick it in and once inside, he realized that the house was much bigger than he had thought and it immediately led to underground where there was a decently sized room with a statue of the faux emperor in the middle and fresh flowers had been placed on a pedestal in front of it, so somebody must have been here very recently. Ambrozy wondered where the flowers would have even come from to begin with, since he had not seen a single one anywhere in the harsh weather of Dolustea. There were doors on all sides of this room and Ambrozy started to open them up, but immediately after opening the first one he realized that this room was full of people.

Ambrozy jumped back and started barking orders for them to get out, threatening with his pistol. They came out, one by one, their frightened gazes firmly fixed to the floor, and Ambrozy realized that they all were young women dressed in identical white gowns. He doubted that he could get anything out of these ladies, it seemed pretty obvious that they were nuns or vestals selected to take care of this separated shrine of the village but it was noteworthy that they were all so young. Ambrozy asked questions from them anyway in the common tongue and was very surprised to hear intelligible answers, probably with the most fluency in the whole village.

It was just like he had suspected, but these nuns were chosen from the elite families of the community, which if why they looked much healthier than the peasants of the village, now that Ambrozy could tell as he had a better look on them. For various reasons all of them were the ones from their families that were not destined to be paired of in regular marriages so they had been cast here, and they were not allowed to leave the house and nobody was allowed to come and meet or see them. They only walked in the midst of the other folk on special occasions. Food was delivered to them and they had ample provisions in one of the rooms. It turned out that they were had been taught much more of the common tongue before sent to this small monastery since it apparently was considered holy, as the "otherworldlers" had brought it here, meaning the pirates who also had spread the Cult of Kai. Ambrozy chuckled to himself how a ragtag group of vagabonds and criminals had managed to do so much for the One Correct Doctrine and would never get any recognition such an impressive achievement. Missionaries had been declared saints for far less.

The vestal that spoke the most and with the most fluency was called Nora, a brunette with big sad eyes and – now that Ambrozy really had a good look – a good figure that even the modest gown could not really hide. Gears started turning in his head, and Ambrozy holstered the pistol and took a much more softer approach. "I came from his home city, you understand?" he said and pointed at the statue holding the book and the staff. The vestals started to lift their heads up and their eyes started to shine from surprise and then nervousness once the meaning of the words started to sink in. They looked at each other, not sure what to think, and a couple of the nuns did not understand what had been said and others had to explain it to them in their own tongue, and soon they started to get excited too. "You can't live like this, you need more, you are holy people. Wait here." Ambrozy said, and he left the stone building to gather some things. He gathered his own things, saying to others that he wanted to sleep separately so that he could meditate more in peace, and then took a bunch of sleeping bags and rations when no one was looking and brought them back to the vestals. "These are much more comfortable, sleep in these." he said to them, and the young nuns were amazed by the warmness and softness of the sleeping bags, having just been sleeping hay with a few coarse blankets to protect from the cold. Ambrozy then had all of them, about a dozen vestals in total, sit in a half circle around him, and Ambrozy opened up the ratio packs that contained the sweet snacks of chocolate, cookies and candy, blessed them with a ceremony where he exaggerated the motions he was supposed to do, and distributed the treats between the vestals, whose eyes went almost upside down in their heads once they tasted sugar and chocolate for the first time in their lives. Ambrozy then gave them a sermon using very simple words but praising the vestals for their dedication and sacrifice and at the same time underlining his own authority and importance, not really knowing how much they precisely understood but it worked nonetheless. The women were instantly hooked and they looked at Ambrozy adoringly like a bunch of children, sitting on their knees around him. Ambrozy had them sleep in the room he had found them in and stayed the night in his own sleeping bag near the front door of the building.

In the next weeks he kept company to the women day and night, lecturing about the tenets of the faith and teaching them more words in the common tongue, learning more about them and their lives. It turned out that the fresh flowers in the pedestal came from a small garden that could be accessed through an underground route that led to the outdoors. There was a rock formation behind the village, not so tall that it could be called a mountain but big and steep enough that everybody, man and beast alike, would walk around it. In the middle of it was a space that could only be accessed through the tunnel from the monastery and here the flowers grew, amazingly enough. The vestals could get fresh air out here and exercise. Ambrozy made sure that the entrance in the monastery would be hidden and the vestals would escape here if anybody else besides him would enter the monastery. He wanted to keep them hidden for as long as he could. So far, no one else has bothered them.

Ambrozy tested with what he could get away with, what these nuns could understand, and seeing the reverence they treated the statue with, it hit him to not only associate himself with their holy figure, but to actually be him. "His body has left us a long time ago, but his spirit, it comes. And he came to me. He is here, right here." Ambrozy said, holding his palm in the front of his chest. This and other statements like it went through and hit the mark, and it didn't take much longer for him to reach the point that if the vestals spent their nights with him, they, too, could reach what he possessed inside him. At first he took them one by one, changing the partner he shared his sleeping bag with each night, but it soon reached a point where he he took two or three or four with him at the same time and he could get away with anything he had fantasized about, even getting the vestals to love each other so that he could watch. He gave them some opioids he had taken from the medics to make the vestals more susceptible.

But after a week of this he was bored out of his mind and he started to spend most of his time again with the soldiers and men to see how the mining was going and when would they be able to get off of this rock. Some of the soldiers were at the excavation site to monitor the progress and provide security in case someone else would also want to harass the engineers at their work but nobody was there to bother them, the rest stayed in the village that had become the main base of operations. The locals were now enslaved and almost any semblance of discipline had withered away. Ambrozy mainly pointed his finger at the Major, who seemed to have completely given in to his alcoholism and he could be on a binge for days on end and the rest of the officers were so young and inexperienced that they were practically teenagers. They seemed to treat the whole expedition now as a summer camp where they had just one some sort of a sporting event now that the aboriginals were subdued. Ambrozy worried that they would take advantage of the indolence of their new masters and throats would be slit in the middle of the night, nobody having apparently learned anything from their previous experiences with the locals.

It really was a miracle that they had survived and the Major had made reckless decisions at every turn. Yes, it was true that they had been plagued by extremely bad luck from the start but the Major seemed to answer every challenge with a "Yes, whatever, it's going to be fine!" attitude without thinking too much about what he was putting him and his men into. Practically nobody could have anticipated modern weapons on the locals here but the inhabitants of the planet could have easily been extremely dangerous with other sorts of weapons: the Great Colonial Wars had been so perilous in many places because the aboriginals of several planets had wielded the tremendous psychic powers of the lifeforms that they had managed to submit to their will. They had found ways to meld their minds with these animals that possessed psionic abilities and then used them in battle, and the loss of blood and treasure had been such a blow to the imperial prestige that previously unimaginable amounts of resources had been invested into the war effort, just to recover the self-esteem of the empire, even though the price paid far exceeded the profits that could be extracted from those places and they could have been gotten far easier from some other planet. No one really knew what Dolustea could have held inside and the Great Colonial Wars had left such a scar on the common psyche that military men everywhere were very cautious where and into what they were dipping toes. Apparently, though, the Major and these kids of Llapus had not gotten the memo and they left the thinking to those who had not been blinded by hubris. The lost tank and the howitzers were taken with the expedition so that they could have some actual firepower and they could have steamrolled the aboriginals without any problem with weapons like that, but the Major had been too impatient to back down and delay the operation. Without Yuri's psionic savant-like attributes they would have all died in the ambush. What else was waiting for them on Dolustea? The only thing they still got were a bunch of rifles and some explosives.

And Yuri's abilities just seemed to grow and grow, reaching almost unreal limits. Ambrozy had seen how he had fought and how he had moved on that night that was so close to a complete disaster. Ambrozy was convinced that Yuri could be thrown with nothing but a sword in hand against an experienced battalion of imperial infantry with all their bells and whistles and Yuri would still end up on top, without a scratch. The thought that hypothetically there could be somewhere in the galaxy a planet full of people like him made Ambrozy shudder at what the cost could be if it would need to be conquered. It still seemed so ridiculous to say about anything that so-and-so could not be possible. Only a fraction of the universe had been charted.

Now that the Major was so much unavailable, a sort of an executive board started to spontaneously form since no one by themselves seemed able to take on the authority, even though it should have naturally fallen to the second highest ranking soldier, but the few young captains were at loss and Ambrozy wondered if they had ever done any actual training in the military academy or had they just automatically received their ranks as a birthright. Besides the officers, an older doctor and an older engineer sat at the table when meetings were held and Oktai was there too, but none of them took the lead and the young knuckleheads would not have most likely listened to them anyway. Oktai was there mostly because the men of faith were respected in general, this was why Ambrozy was allowed to be there too, but Oktai had his head too much in the clouds to do anything in the real world. Ambrozy started to become irritated if he looked too long at the Oktai's dozy gaze of a ruminating mammal. What an idiot.

But there was something in his methods, without the fool realizing it himself. Most of the men came to his ceremonies when he held them, and those who didn't usually were actually doing something that they were supposed to so they had a real reason for not being there. In the meetings of the officers, he used his time to go on long tirades about the imperial mission: "Here the seed we will sow will go strong and tall. A mission will be built next to the mayoral house, and the mistakes of the past will not need to carry themselves here. The resources gathered here will be focused on the spreading of the One Correct Doctrine and not on great monuments and lavish temples. Schools will sprout in every colonial outpost on Dolustea and this barren land will prove to be the birthplace for the New Temple." Ambrozy had a hard time to listen to this with a straight face but the others around him did not seem to share his badly disguised distaste, but were nodding in satisfaction as these utopian plans were far enough in the future that they need not contribute anything to it right now but it sealed their beliefs that they were on the right track and doing the right thing. "Isn't that right, brother Broniec? Isn't that right?" Oktai used to say to Ambrozy in front of everyone after each of his speeches, and Ambrozy managed to stammer his assurances each time.

After another one of these fruitless meetings, Ambrozy sat down on the steps of the porch in front of the house they had been in as others walked past him. He rubbed his chin and started to think in earnest how things were going around here. Now, if ever, was the time for him to step up since the whole expedition was such a mess. He had thought that the vestals had been so easy to convince to do what he wanted willingly since they were so vulnerable and ignorant but it did not seem that anybody else here was any the wiser. Yuri had been a different case altogether since he was so hopelessly lost but Ambrozy had been keeping his eye on him and Yuri spent more and more time with Oktai and absorbed all the contents of the One Correct Doctrine that were thrown his way like a sponge, much more so than Ambrozy had thought him to be interested in or even be able to. Even the most esoteric teachings and issues interested him immensely. Ambrozy had seriously underestimated how deeply and how quickly Yuri would fall in with the Cult of Kai. Ambrozy was worried that he might even go too deep, since he had a different look in his eyes and his meditative and praying practices seemed to have a self-injurious or punishing quality to them. Ambrozy had seen him sit without a shirt in snow on late nights and sometimes he watched the numerous campfires in a way that he might just go and grab whatever was burning in them. Once Ambrozy had noticed Yuri putting small screws he had taken from one of the equipment boxes through his belt that he wore every day and Ambrozy could not help but think that the young hermit had finally cracked. Ambrozy would need to sit him down soon to check out where his mind was and then drag him back to the real world. But the behavior of Yuri, the vestals and now these people sitting in the executive board were all indicating something.

Was Ambrozy not just cynical enough? The narrative that everybody around him seemed to need was flying so high and was so much in contradiction with reality that even he had a hard time swallowing that they believed it. The Cult of Kai owned so much land and was so rich and powerful that you could argue that it was a state within a state and the higher-ups were more lawyers or businessmen than actual religious leaders, so talking about how things would somehow suddenly be different here was just ludicrous. Everybody was steadily sailing towards the promised land that was constantly just a touch out of reach and the reality was business as usual until then, but the "then" was never going to come. Without that goal, however, the society was at sea. Ambrozy wondered if it was some sort of a fifty-fifty situation, where others were striving towards the utopia and the rest were there to profit and said whatever and did whatever to get ahead.

To himself, Ambrozy never pretended that he was doing anything else than the latter option. Politics weren't about good and evil, virtue and vice; they were about power and self-interest. Sometimes he suspected that the whole Cult of Kai was made to control the masses: you couldn't place a policeman at every street corner, but you could put the reverence of the empire in every man's heart. It probably wasn't that straightforward though, and there was the possibility that the first emperor all those centuries ago really had been a man on a mission and he had meant what he had said, genuinely earning his reputation as a holy man. But if on one hand you had him and his true, original disciples, about a dozen of them, and on the other the rest of humanity, it was immediately clear that the human species just did not think like that and wasn't up for the task. It was as if there had been a freak accident, a bunch of people somehow ascending beyond humanity and reaching a level of truly higher morality, but that's what it had been, a freak accident, and after that everybody else was expected to follow in those shoes and it simply was impossible. "But we sure like to think that we can." Ambrozy thought to himself.

So how far could he push this? Possibly way farther than he previously thought, and what he had peddled for the lost souls might have a much wider appeal. Ambrozy decided to push these buttons to the best of his ability, if not for anything else then just because of curiosity. One of the captains was passing him by, the last one to leave the house, and Ambrozy called after him. "I'd like to address the whole expedition if possible, tomorrow already if it's okay. We have had some difficult times and I think the men need some encouragement. After lunch, if that's fine?" The captain just agreed, not thinking much about it.

The next day, after everybody had eaten, the men available were gathered to the center of the village. Ambrozy stood up on a metal crate that contained some spare parts for the exoskeletons. "Thank you everybody for coming." Ambrozy started after everybody had settled down. Ambrozy hadn't spoken much to anybody before this so the men were mostly disinterested but polite towards the representative of the state religion, expecting some regular sermon that they had heard a million times before in their lives every week and holiday. "You all have withstood many perils on this journey but you have held your heads high, never complaining and never giving in. If the empire would have had more men like you we most likely would not be living in these tumultuous times. You have all done your duties admirably and I think that you all deserve to hear how all this came to be and what has been lying just beneath the surface, for you all have ended up here for a greater reason and a greater purpose than you can imagine."

"When a battle ravaged in the eternal capital of our mighty galactic empire and I covered in my chamber of the temple I was placed at as the explosions around me made the ground tremble and the ceiling almost gave in, I could not feel anything but sadness and bitterness in my heart as everything that I had loved in the world, the things I had given my life to and the values I had dedicated to serve until the end of my days crumbled around me and the future seemed dark and bleak. Tears welled in my eyes and I could not move, but I was not paralyzed from the fear for my own safety, but from the hopelessness and depression that the came from the madness all around me and I did not seek a safer place to be, since I could not bear to see what had happened to our precious city. I was all alone as everybody else had fled, but then I heard a voice, a firm and clear voice, soothing and affirming like nothing I had ever heard before, and I looked around to see who talked to me so sweetly, but there was no one there and there couldn't have been. The voice came back, stronger than before, and I realized that it did not come outside of me but inside. "Don't cry, my son. Courage can't fail you if it comes from me. Brace the dangers of the streets and do not be afraid of the bombs and bullets, but walk straight and proud, for I will watch over you and you will face no harm." These words the voice said to me, and I could not doubt them, for I knew them to be true." Ambrozy held a dramatic pause and he looked into the eyes of his listeners seriously, and it was clear that this kind of speech was not what they had expected at all, but they listened eagerly.

"So outside I went, and it was horrible and my heart sank even lower as I saw the destruction in the streets and the flames rose up to the sky behind the tall buildings in every direction, and I heard screaming and crying and the incessant crackling of the rifles, only broken by the explosions that drowned out every other sound and lit the sky up like a solar flare. But the words I had heard in my soul braced my, and I walked, walked through it all, and I stepped over the dead men and passed by the children that covered in the ruins for they had not found any better shelter and I did not now where I was going, but there was a purpose in my mind that I had never felt before and I was sure of my feet finding their way. No bullet grazed me and no shrapnel pierced me, no fire burned me even though it should have and I should on all accounts be a dead man, but it was not my time yet. And behold, a secret state archive had been blown open and I climbed over the rubble of the destroyed wall and walked through the abandoned corridors as the dust on top of the lamps floated on me as the explosions shook the ground. I found myself in front of a room that contained the most secret information the empire had in it's clutches, and I reached my arm in front of a shelf and grasped a dossier. I contained the coordinates for Dolustea and the site for the red menicite. I knew what I had to do."

"The new center of the empire shall be founded on Llapus, and the red menicite here will be used to build a next generation super weapon that can counter the evil schemes that now threaten the empire. The voice I had heard was none other than the first emperor himself, and through me you all can hear his voice too. All this had been preordained." Ambrozy wondered if he had gone too far, but this seemed to work just fine. Ambrozy decided to push the pedal even further.

"And I am not the only one the emperor called upon. We were all saved by the hands of the young man the world had cast away, and without him we all would have perished on the night of the native's ambush. This you all saw with your own eyes." Ambrozy said and he gestured towards Yuri with his right hand, who was startled to suddenly be in the center of the attention. But this was no lie, and all the men had recognized his amazing deed and the officers had wanted to promote him and give him a medal, but Yuri had declined and didn't want anything. But everybody else now treated him with a reverence and respect like no other.

"And he saved my life countless times in our journeys, and without him we would have not gotten here on Dolustea in the first place. He is one of the Sentinels of the Kai, the first one of the new batch of this ancient creed, a breed lost but not forgotten, whether or not he knows it himself. But this, too, was meant by the first emperor." To end his speech, Ambrozy pointed at the aboriginal statue with the book and the staff in the middle of the village square. "He has been here already, and it is no wonder that we shall find the keys to the new age in a place like this. You are all here for a reason. Never stray away from the purpose of your mission.

Ambrozy stepped down from the crate and walked away, and it all seemed to have been a great success. The men were dead silent, processing what they had heard and they followed him with their eyes as long as possible, and when Ambrozy could not be seen any longer as he entered one of the narrow streets between the houses, Ambrozy stopped and he could hear the confused and excited murmur of the men fill the air. Ambrozy leaned against the wall happy about his performance and then continued on his way, but then saw the Major staggering towards him, drunk as the worst bum on the worst slums on Llapus. He looked terrible as his bender did not seem to end at all.

"A prophet, ey, a prophet... I knew there was something wrong with you, when you came, when you came knocking at my office..." he slurred, and Ambrozy was surprised that the Major had been able hear or even comprehend his speech, so slushed the man was and it seemed that he had just woken up from the bottom of some ditch somewhere. It really was a marvel that the leader of an operation like this allowed himself to end in a state like that. Ambrozy had assumed that the major would not be able to hear his speech and he wondered if the Major was going to cause a scene and people would be attracted by his yelling. He pointed at Ambrozy with his index finger and the same hand that was holding the open bottle. His breath smelled terrible and Ambrozy wanted to cover his own face. "But you listen, holy boy, I'm the commanding officer and I'm watching, I'm always watching, even when you think that I'm not, but I do, I do. A wrong move, one wrong move, and you end up like these natives if you try to surpass my authority. So know your place, like I do, and my place is above everybody else." the Major garbled drunkenly, and his face was fierce even though his eyes did not seem to focus. He took a swing from his bottle and he tottered away, singing some stupid song when he was a little farther away. Ambrozy looked after him and wondered what the hell the expedition was going to do with such an incompetent leader. This could not stand, and Ambrozy decided to look for the Major tonight, to see where he spent his nights. He started to walk to the monastery when Yuri walked to him.

"What was that speech suddenly about? So you're some sort of a chosen one now? Have you lost your mind?" he said, and Yuri looked uneasy. Ambrozy smiled at him. "Well, it was the truth. I feel so much better after getting it out in the open and out of my chest. If I would have started to tell tales like that to you in the jungle back on Llapus, what would have you done? Left me there or dumped me to the first person you saw or to the nearest city available? A crazy man who fell from the sky." he chuckled, but Yuri did not seem convinced. Ambrozy continued. "And speaking of crazy, your one to talk. What the hell is that about?" he said and he pointed at Yuri's belt, the one he knew was now full of sharp screws. Yuri looked even more uneasy as he now realized that he had been caught, and he mumbled something incoherent while his gaze darted from the ground to the wall on their left. Ambrozy shook his head. "The Cult does not want your flesh, and there is nothing to be gained from walking a way of pain like that. There's no way that brother Oktai has guided you towards that direction, so cease that sort of behavior at once. If you feel anxious, come talk to me or brother Oktai. You're not alone." he lectured sternly but softly. Yuri did not answer. Ambrozy reached into his pockets and pulled out some of the opioids he had given to the vestals. "If you can't sleep during the night, take some of these. You're a sturdy fellow, but don't overdo it. You need to rest too." he said and offered the pills to Yuri, who pocketed them after some hesitation. The opioids would produce a slight euphoria, and seemed a decent way to get Yuri to calm down a bit. Ambrozy would need to hold his hand and really train him in many things after they would get out of Dolustea and things would calm down a bit, but medication was a good temporary solution in a situation like this. He tapped Yuri on his shoulder encouragingly and started to walk towards the monastery to rest. He looked over his shoulder and Yuri was leaning against the wall in the spot they had talked, looking into the distance.

The night came, and Ambrozy went to walk around the village to look if he could find the Major. He found the man quickly, as he was singing and drinking around a campfire with other soldiers who were no worse to wear and Ambrozy again could only wonder why the Major could not see how damaging his own behavior was to his subordinates. Ambrozy went to sit behind a mining vehicle that was in the village for some repairs and he followed the situation. Hours went by and Ambrozy was becoming very sleepy, and the drinking songs these swine had continuously been belting out rang inside Ambrozy's head like a cacophony but Ambrozy did not want to give in, since he was hoping that the Major would become separated from his group at some point. Finally the party was over as the drinking buddies had been passing out one by one and the loud singing had been replaced by loud snoring. Ambrozy was really cold from being awake all night and the weather was freezing and really wet in a way that the coldness ended up in your bones no matter what you did. Ambrozy thought how stupid he was for not taking anything to eat with him, but at least he had taken his canteen and he took a swing of the ice cold water that made him shudder and he felt the coldness of the drink behind his eyeballs. He yawned and wondered what he should do about the Major, but then the old drunkard got suddenly up and went up the stairs of the palisade, mumbling as he went. Ambrozy followed him from a distance and the Major went up the wall to relieve himself. It was still pitch black since there was so little light in the Dolustean days so the sunrise was still hours away, even though it was almost five AM. Some snow was falling, and the big flakes took their time before they reached the ground.

Ambrozy peeked around the corner and saw that the Major had not been successful on his mission, as he had fallen asleep on a bench near the edge of the palisade and the belt of his pants was open. Ambrozy looked around and saw now one nearby, not on the palisade or in streets of the village that could be seen from the spot he was at. Ambrozy squatted, rubbed his temples and concentrated his groggy mind.

The fat body of the Major hit the edge of the palisade that was around the height of his shoulders when he was sitting at the bench, and he let a muffled grumble as the air escaped his lungs. Ambrozy heaved in air as he knew that the Major had not fallen yet and he mustered all the psionic energy that he could get for another push, and so the Major, the incompetent bastard, was flung over the edge, falling into the dark nothingness. Ambrozy did not hear a thud that should have come, but his eyes had been filled with dancing colors and he felt his head spin as a wave of a migraine bounced about inside his skull. He was not at all a talented psionic user to begin with and straining himself like this after a sleepless night was just too much. Once his eyes cleared and he could finally see again, he looked around but again saw nobody anywhere. He walked down the palisade and drank more from his canteen. He didn't know if the icy water helped or made his headache worse.

He needed to make sure what had happened to the body. Most of the guards stood at the broken part of the palisade but there were several gates on the intact parts, but Yuri did not go through the first one but the second one, as the guards on the second one walking above the gate and the door was slightly ajar, missing the soldier who was supposed to be standing there. Yuri slipped through and almost hugged the wall so that the guards above would not see him as he walked towards the spot where the Major had fallen.

And there he was, mangled into an unnatural position, clearly not in the best health. It was an eight or nine meter drop and Ambrozy was very happy with what he had accomplished. But then there was a noise that Ambrozy could not recognize or locate, so startled, he looked all around him to find the source of the noise, and then he realized that it was coming from the body. The Major was not quite dead and he moaned, ever so slightly, and you had to be right next to him to hear it and his voice was so low that it was no wonder that Ambrozy did not realize that it was coming from him. Ambrozy sighted and wondered what he should do, looking around him once more to double check that nobody truly could see them. He could use his psionics to suffocate the dying man, but Ambrozy did not feel up to the task after already pushing himself so hard. So he looked around, picked up a big rock, aimed a bit and smashed the skull of his enemy, like the first man in the history of all humanity must have done all those eons ago. It made a wet, cracking sound and the face of the fat man was no more, and the moaning stopped too, which was a plus. Ambrozy walked around the body and the falling snow covered all the tracks. He emerged back into the village at the broken side of the palisade and he just waved hello to the guards who waved back without asking any questions. Who knew about the comings and goings of the holy monks, let alone actual, real-life prophets?

It took four days before anybody even thought about looking for the Major. Everybody just assumed that somebody had seen him and nobody really expected him to do any real leading anymore anyway, so the people just didn't wonder about his whereabouts. Finally somebody started wondering where the Major was, and once it came to light that nobody had seen him in days, the search actually started. It took three more days to find the body since it was under so much snow. A funeral was arranged and the imperial flag was laid on his coffin, one of the crates for the exoskeleton's spare parts. In general, everybody seemed to take it as granted that the alcohol had finally claimed its victory.

But when the executive board was having a meeting after the funeral, Ambrozy started talking. "Do you really think that this was just an accident? We are on occupied territory and the locals are not happy about us being here! Who is to say that this wasn't a murder, a clever plot to take out our leader, and now we just swallow it hook, line and sinker? Isn't that exactly what they would want? We have been sleeping on the discipline issue for far too long, and we will all end up our throats slit if this goes on!" Oktai was the only one who said something against him. "But what if you are wrong, brother Breniec? What if it really was an accident?" Ambrozy shook his head. "That changes nothing, we still have a serious disciplinary issue that can have serious consequences. I'm not taking that risk."

The aboriginals were blamed for a murder and there were public executions and other punishments. Drinking was forbidden and everything again was done properly. Ambrozy spoke to the men twice a week and he practically became the head of the executive board. Nobody had voted for him but nobody opposed him either. He deepened the lore he was making up about the first emperor talking directly to him and emphasized the holy mission the expedition was on. He started to bring the vestals out of the monastery and used them as an example of how the piousness of the Cult of Kai could be so reverent even in a place like this. He gave them various tasks and jobs and they became his helpers on the rituals and ceremonies he was conducting. The soldiers were amazed to suddenly see such beautiful ladies like these in the village, but they soon started to treat them as holy and they were too respected. With one of the vestals there was a romance with one of the soldiers and the nun cried and fell to her knees when Ambrozy found about it, but Ambrozy said that he did not judge her and if she wanted to lead a life as a commoner rather than as a holy servant of the first emperor, she was free to make such a choice. With gratitude and repentance, she thanked Ambrozy and asked forgiveness for her sinful ways, and the romance with the soldier ended and that was that. Nora, the nun with the most linguistic talent, became his favorite and practically his wife. She had no problems learning anything new, and it would not take long for her to be indistinguishable from a civilized, imperial woman. Ambrozy was actually becoming somewhat proud of her.

Things were humdrum for a while and the excavation was progressing steadily, until one day the chief engineer came to see Ambrozy without even thinking about contacting any of the officers first, so steady had his image as the leader become in the eyes of the expedition. Apparently the excavators had hit a nest of some kind of local animals and they had defended their home: three men were injured but no one had luckily died, two excavators had suffered some superficial damage but repairs could be done. Everyone had ran out of the tunnel and the operation was at standstill. The engineer had come to report and was explaining different options of what they could do next.

"The tunnel is just big enough for the excavators and these things just burst out of the walls, see?" the engineer said as he was showing from his computer a video recording the excavator had been taking when the incident happened. True enough, horrid creatures burrowed through the walls and started biting and slashing at the machine and Ambrozy could not but shudder from disgust, even though the picture quality was dark and grainy, the only clear part being the in the middle where the light above the camera was directly shining. Hard, chitin shell covered the front part of the animals that had several claws it apparently used for digging, but the rest of the body was long and maggot-like, pulsating and almost see-through with blue and red veins going all over. Where one would normally expect to see a head of some kind there was instead a pink, fleshlike orifice opening and closing, the edges of the hole forming pink and red appendages that were constantly moving and touching anything that was in front of the creature. By the looks of it, they most likely were blind and used them as feelers to navigate underground.

"They varied in size but were pretty big in general, the tentacles at front of them would be at the hips of a grown man." the engineer explained, demonstrating their height with his hand. "And they were pretty strong, too. The men who were hurt are sitting inside the excavator near the doors, but these creatures managed to bend the edges of the hatches and get their claws in, but fortunately they couldn't fit completely through the holes they had made and they could only cut the men they could reach. Otherwise it could have been a massacre." The engineer rubbed his forehead, clearly stressed out by the situation. He was in his late thirties, a lanky man with a pale complexion and a bald spot, his hollow cheeks betraying his ill constitution for dangerous and demanding work like this. He was suited for an office job with air conditioning and a coffee room, into the predictable dullness in any of the engineering firms in the major civilized cities of the empire, but little of bourgeois comfortabilities could be found here on the field. He seemed to itch in the standard overalls that civilians would wear on military expeditions like this and the blocky computer he had to carry with him everywhere was too much for his skinny stature, reminding Ambrozy of those iron weights inmates were chained to in prisons. But the chief engineer was conservative and diligent, doing what his duty demanded from him, without ever questioning why and what for.

"The excavators obviously sent tremors through the earth and these creatures were disturbed by them. Once the men were safe on the surface, I did some experimenting: I used a drill near the opening of the digging site to send some vibrations into the ground and monitored on the computer if there would be movement from the animals. I determined a frequency that would be enough to make them aggressive and I think I found were their nest is with the scanners we normally use to find different mineral deposits underground." Now the image on the computer screen was changed to a picture that depicted a cross-section of the ground under the mining site, the tunnel being in the middle of it and there were lumps of different colors here and there around it. The engineer tapped the screen, showing one of them. "Here is the red minecite, it's not going to take long anymore to reach it." The pointed to a different spot. "And here is the nest I think. I originally thought it was a nickel deposit or something like that, but the spot starts to move if the vibrations exceed a certain amount and it really gets stirred up if the source of the vibrations gets close enough. Hence the attack."

Ambrozy stared at the screen deep in thought and rubbed the stubble on his chin. He had stopped shaving some time ago. "So what do you suggest we do? Can we bait them to the surface and just shoot them? You think we could kill them all like that?" The engineer thought for a while. "Yes, I think it could be possible to get them to come all the way to sunlight. I haven't tried that so I can't say for sure..." the engineer said, trying to conclude his thought, but Ambrozy was already up from his chair and walking towards the door. "Then we try it now, no point in waiting. Gather your stuff." he said, and the surprised engineer started to pack up the computer.

They didn't have to walk, since one of the personnel carriers was dedicated to chauffeur people from the village to the mining site and vice versa. It was midday, and the rays of the sun seemed to carry very little warmth to the surface of this dreary planet. Wet slosh flew everywhere when the vehicle plowed through the snow. It often snowed several days straight on Dolustea, then the sun would meekly and half-heartedly bless the world for a day before the clouds once again covered the sky to pour down the endless snow. It was always damp and not cold enough for the snow to become a fine powder. At least a third of the men always had the flu.

The mining site looked like any mining operation anywhere had ever looked like, but all the vehicles and equipment were at least a kilometer away from the tunnel entrance. The injured men had been taken to the village immediately. The rest of the personnel looked anxious and startled, smoking as they huddled together near the excavators. A couple of the mechanics were making repairs. Nobody wanted to wander too far off.

"So where do you suggest would be a good place to try the drill?" Ambrozy asked, and the chief engineer started his work. A spot was chosen far enough away from the men and the mining site. The drill was a smaller vehicle that carried a steel frame around a four-meter drill that looked like a big bullet or a missile, once at the location the vehicle would bolt itself to the ground, raise the steel frame, bolt that to the ground and the drill would be functional. A sizable amount of thin but incredibly durable metal wire on a reel would help to guide the drill back up to the surface once it had done its job. "I'll monitor the scanners to see what the animals do, then adjust the motor to produce different levels of vibration at different depths to see if those produce different results." the engineer said, and Ambrozy let him work. The drill could be operated in the cabin of the vehicle but this time it was done remotely with the computer for obvious reasons. Ambrozy, the engineer and a couple of soldiers and mechanics were at the top of a hill five hundred meters away from the drill. It clicked, clacked and whirred as the mechanical parts burrowed into the ground and the frame with the drill inside rose upright. It sounded like a small rocket powering up as the drill started to sink into the ground but the noise quickly died down as it went deeper, leaving only the monotone hum of the vehicle's engine. Now they only could wait to see if anything happened. The soldiers had their rifles ready just in case. Ambrozy sat in the personnel carrier with the door open, boiling water at giving cups of instant coffee to everybody. It would be good for the men to see that he was not suddenly too high and mighty to associate with them directly and he was doing his best to look after them. And he really wanted some himself but would look like a complete jerk if he didn't offer coffee to anybody else. Only the chief engineer declined, too concentrated in the monitoring of the computer.

"Movement!" he cried after about forty minutes, everyone startled by his sudden high-pitched voice. "They are coming for the drill. I'll see if I can get them to follow it as it pulls up." The soldiers got ready, taking positions and aiming at the area around the drill. The engine of the personnel carrier was started in case they had to flee. The soldiers could get away quickly with their exoskeletons, others climbed into the carrier.

Minutes went by in silence as the engineer stared at the screen intently and others could only wait tensely. The whirring of the engine from the drill's vehicle got louder as the speed increased on the reel when it pulled the metal wire back. "Now their coming, try to protect the drill from them, we don't want to lose any more equipment!" the engineer shrieked, clearly at the limits of his nerves.

And they did burst up around the drill, foul and slimy creatures, wriggling like worms. They swarmed around the vehicle, climbing all over it, flipping around as they were knocked away by others coming behind them, blind and ferocious. The soldiers started shooting and it was like fish in a barrel: Blue guts and grime flew into the air as the bullets pierced the translucents midsections and the latter parts of the animals bodies juddered around aimlessly as they were torn apart and cut off. The fronts, however, took this punishment well: With a weird clicking and crackling sound they either continued the attack or started to escape and burrowed back into the ground, and it took several seconds of more shooting to get the most aggressive ones to completely die. Soon it was all over, and the whole episode had taken less than a minute. The men relaxed and the engineer slumped in his chair, rubbing his forehead with shaking hands. It was a good thing that he was not a military officer with short nerves like that. Ambrozy gave him a water bottle and patted him on the back reassuringly.

"There there, it went well. Is the drill okay? How many do you think came back to the surface?" Ambrozy said and the engineer took a sip from the bottle. He was calming down and Ambrozy let him take his time before answering. The engineer glanced at the computer screen. "The drill seems to be fine, I think only the doors are broken and the drivers cabin took some damage." he was quiet for a while, thinking. "I don't think that many of those animals came and attacked, I saw a small ball start to move away from where their nest is but we don't know anything about what they are like. It is possible that only some of them are types that can fight and the workers or larva they have at the nest is harmless, but then again they all could be like that. I don't see any movement back to the nest, so I think that those that escaped were dead on the way, they took way too much damage." He rubbed his forehead again. "But I don't think that that was that. We can't go back to the tunnel unless we are absolutely sure that they are not a problem anymore. The risk is too big."

Ambrozy leaned back on his seat, he didn't want to look back at the area where the drill was since the dead animals were still twitching about. The mechanics looked the least happy since they knew who had to go and clean up the drill and its vehicle. "Next time we'll have to also use the weapons of the aboriginals, we are going to use up too much of the ammunition if it takes that much shooting to kill them. But what do we do about the nest if we can't be sure that we can get all of them to the surface? We still have plenty of explosives, right? Can we do something with those?" Ambrozy thought out loud, mostly addressing himself than the engineer. The engineer thought about it.

"If I went too deep and too near the nest they got agitated, even when the vibrations it produced were relatively little, but they got even more aggressive if I produced too much vibration if the drill was much farther away. That's why they followed it up even to the surface. We could try to drill as close to them as we can and then drop explosives into the hole, but we can't be sure that we get close enough to have the explosion kill all of them. Sure we could put everything we got into it to do the best we can, but we actually don't have that much explosives left after we've needed them on so many occasions and we could still require them for the actual mining. That waste could jeopardize the whole operation." the engineer said.

Ambrozy thought about it. "So how about multiple baits? We get to the surface as many as we can and kill those, then do another tunnel that we drop the explosives in? Maybe you could get it much closer if you make that drill less irritating for them and then the majority go after the one that goes all the way to the surface?" The engineer listened to him intently, then started nodding after a while. "It sounds reasonable, yes. We could try it out." Ambrozy got up from his seat and climbed out of the vehicle. "Then we do that. Tomorrow we will set everything up, the day after that is the operation." he said, and he went to gather the men and to tell them to get a move on.

The next day he briefed everybody on what was going on and the soldiers jumped to action. Ambrozy negotiated with the officers how many men the operation would need and who should stay at the village. Soldiers practiced using the weapons of the aboriginals The chief engineer went to set everything up and choose good locations for the drills. As the day went by and everybody was shuffling about to get their tasks done, Ambrozy noticed Yuri skulking around, restless and unfocused as he now always was. Looking at him Ambrozy had an idea. He gestured to Yuri to come talk to him.

"You itching for some action already? I think I know what you should do." he said, and Yuri looked back at him with a puzzled look. "The men have seen you in action and know how important your role is in all this. Why not pour some valor into them and blow off some steam at the same time?" Ambrozy said, then he tapped the hilt of the sword that hung on Yuri's belt. "Put on the exoskeleton and hack away those beasts as they come up, it's nothing that you haven't seen on Llapus a million times before! When it gets too hot just jump away so that the soldiers can start shooting. You have the bravery and strength to face them, then enough wit to know when it's time to get out. It would do so much good for them to be reminded what the imperial sentinel is made of."

Yuri looked at him with a blank stare. "Are you asking me to risk my life that stupidly? What's the point if we can just shoot them just like that?" Ambrozy shrugged. "It's not really asking to risk a life when I'm asking you with the capabilities you have. I'm basically asking you to work out in public. You know how to take care of yourself." he said. "Have you been taking the medication?" Ambrozy added, and Yuri just nodded, apparently a little embarrassed. Now that Ambrozy was face to face with Yuri, he could see that Yuri indeed was in a little bit of a stupor. At least it was taking the biggest edge of his anxiety, even though he had become more passive than usual.

"Come with me." Ambrozy said, and they went into a tent that one of the doctors had set up, as he found the hygiene in the aboriginal houses lacking and didn't want to stay in any of them. Ambrozy looked into the chests and bags before he found the battle stimulants. He took a bunch and gave them to Yuri. "Take a few of these before the event to get you going." Yuri was now so used to the fact that Ambrozy was giving him pills to swallow that he didn't even hesitate and just pocketed what had been given to him.

The day came and everything was set up. The drill that was supposed to make the tunnel for the explosives was in a different spot a kilometer away and three drills were put up to the spot that was supposed to bait the attackers to the surface. Before starting, Ambrozy addressed the men.

"It has been a time-honored tradition for the Sentinels of the Empire to test their strength against great adversity, to deepen their dedication and grow as warriors. Our sentinel has chosen this occasion to better himself. He will fight as many of those creatures as he can by himself, and no-one is to shoot before he has evacuated the battlefield. May his conviction inspire you all." Everybody was surprised and many looked at each other with worried faces. This was supposed to be a relatively safe operation and they wanted no more of their own to die on this cursed planet. Such risk was needless folly, and some started to shift around nervously in their positions.

Ambrozy gestured for Yuri to come before him and Yuri stepped out with full armor and sword unsheathed, his helmet off in his other hand. Ambrozy blessed him and conducted a short ritual that he had made up in his head fifteen minutes earlier. He looked into Yuri's eyes and saw his enlarged pupils. The stimulants were doing their job. "Alright, are you ready, Imperial Sentinel?" He said with an encouraging smirk, and Yuri nodded as he looked to be in a zone where he barely understood human speech. He put the helmet on and walked downhill into the middle of the three drills, leaving lonely footprints into the fresh snow as everybody else looked after the holy warrior that had suddenly appeared into their midst, seemingly from nowhere.