walls, checked everything mercilessly — so that, God forbid, somebody's brains would not get stuck in a bar behind a box with salted peanuts.
They dragged the corpses away to the landing field, opened the thermoconcrete up and burned the hell out of everything with modern weapons
— neutron guns and annihilators. Not a speck was left of the corpses and the ground was baked for two hundred meters down into a glass pancake… Then they sealed thermoconcrete back up and everything was tip- top. They threatened the personnel to cut their families down to a fifth removed degree, including children in their mothers' bellies if anybody spoke an extra word to the media. One hundred fifty people were all. You could count them — all the stiffs were present, lying in a neat pile next to the cargo terminal…
Concerning commandos, it was discovered that there were twenty six hundred three Aloms and eighty six Earthmen in the division. Sixteen Earthmen were officers. The most interesting part of it was that while all non- Aloms had the opportunity to leave, some of them stayed. The colonel and two more officers shot themselves and sixteen Earthmen, desperate adventurers joined their comrades and went to Kissur the White Falcon. In spite of the official Federation language being the only one allowed spoken in the army, they had picked up some Alom on the way.
They took Bemish on a brief trip around the building that belonged to him. At every corner, he saw people wearing Federation military uniforms and babbling in Alom. In the air traffic control office, he saw a small group of personnel that were so sleep deprived that they were no longer frightened of anything. The guards walked Bemish to a car that stood on the landing field with the engine already running and politely suggested to him to get out of there.
Bemish silently climbed into the car and pushed the accelerator. One after another, the gates on the landing field opened, letting him through. Bemish drove down the same road that they had taken yesterday bringing him in.
Rice fields still glistened in the sun and olive trees still stood along the old road. The soldiers and the zealots had torn all the fruits off breaking the branches in the process. Olive trees were always planted along the roads — road dust covered fruits forcing them to ripe quicker.
A fighting banner of the White Falcon clan and a standard of the Empire were swaying above his villa. Bemish kept going forward.
Kissur, however, still didn't have that many soldiers and it looked to Bemish like they were mostly concentrated in the spaceport. Few posts were present on the road — they were constantly on the line with the headquarters. Next to the turn leading to the villa, Bemish noticed a dozen commandos.
A line of 'yellow jackets' and Empire troops started soon after, a kilometer and a half away from the villa. Journalists lingered behind them.
The soldiers at the road block waved their hands and their assault rifles at him. A studded chain lay across the road, Bemish slowed down, turned across the chain and waited — a large pack of policemen, journalists and Earthmen was running towards him.
Strangely, there were many more journalists this time and Bemish could only blink at the camera flashes. The reasons for that were pretty simple. Most of the officials that had tried to keep the media away were now in Assalah.
'Are you all right, sir?' a guard asked. Another clicked the gun bolt. The assault rifle in his hands gleamed in the sun reflecting rice fields and clouds turned upwards down.
'Yes,' Bemish said climbing out of the car. Five minutes later, a police helicopter with a yellow band on the side — the symbol of the Department of Serenity and Justice — was flying him to the capital.
The helicopter landed next to the sovereign's palace, right at Seven Grains Hotel. Here, the highest provincial functionaries used to await their award or execution; here, the head of the sect that wanted to make peace to Earthmen had been killed eleven months ago.
A whole flock of journalists rushed towards Bemish. The first among them was a guy wearing a square pattern sleeveless shirt. This guy had written a while ago that the Assalah Company director hadn't been proficient in Weian and had mistakenly taken metaphorical 'demons' for a literate statement.
'Is it true that the Federation troops switched their alliance to Kissur?'
'It is true,' Bemish replied.
'Why?'
'The division was 90 % Alom,' Bemish replied. 'At the same time, there was not a single Alom officer in it. So, the Federation soldiers decided to fight for the man who belonged to the clan that their ancestors swore fealty to. They didn't want to fight for the people that paid them three hundred credits a year. I was told that the other commando divisions had the same number of Aloms in them.'
'About ten members of the emergency committee ended up in Kissur's hands. Kissur demanded their arrest and execution. What happened to them? Is it true that Shavash is dead?'
'Shavash is quite alive,' Bemish said. 'His quarrel with Kissur was an utter fabrication. He called the Federation soldiers in to provide Kissur with troops.'
Everybody gaped — they didn't know anything yet and Bemish was the first one to openly state what had happened.
'What about the zealots?' a journalist shouted, 'Are they also in?'
'No,' Bemish said.
'The fight between Shavash and zealots could end only with one of the sides being destroyed. Once the Federation soldiers had switched their alliance to Kissur, he used them to exterminate the zealots. I saw the sect's leaders hanging on a cargo crane with my own eyes.'
It was astonishing that nobody asked at that moment what happened to the rest of the zealots. Somehow everybody decided that 'the extermination of zealots' was limited only to the execution of a dozen leaders.
'What does Kissur want?' somebody shouted. 'They demanded that the corrupted government to step down and now half of the corrupted government is hanging out in Assalah! What's gonna happen next?'
'Kissur has no more demands for his own government,' Bemish explained. 'Kissur would like Weia and the Federation to conduct talks about their future relations. The negotiations are to be held at the highest possible level.'
After this brief but shocking interview, Bemish entered the hotel where they were already waiting for him.
In the Hall of the Gifts from Afar, a table made in the shape of a grape bunch stood on gilded legs that resembled ram's hooves. At this table, provincial governors had officially delivered gifts to palace department heads. Now twenty people sat behind it. Bemish recognized half a dozen of them — Federation envoy Severin, general Stesh, the deceased Giles' boss, ex-first minister Yanik and a couple of high Weian officials. The others were Earthmen — five senators and three people with general insignias.
'They flew in here without troops,' Bemish thought about the people in military uniforms. 'They don't make generals out of Aloms, they only make soldiers out of them.'
Bemish's story about his stay in the terrorists' nest was heard out in dead silence.
'Are you sure that there is not a single zealot left in the spaceport?' envoy Severin asked again.
'There is not a single alive zealot present,' Bemish assured him.
'But it totally changes the situation,' a delegate said. 'We wouldn't have been able to conduct negotiations with zealots. Shavash's presence changes the picture. He is a normal person…'
'Shavash is a normal man, isn't he?!' Bemish shouted. 'Would, in your opinion, a normal man get three thousand people together just to exterminate them all?'
'Well, you can't deny that it improved the situation in the country. Shavash's desire to get rid of destabilizing forces…'
'He wouldn't give a fig about them being destabilizing forces! Shavash would make a deal with destabilizing forces, demons, devils, Gera, with God knows whom. He just had a misfortune to have a personal quarrel with the zealots' spiritual head and so he killed them all.'
'What are you suggesting we do?' it was Severin talking.
'There are no more hostages in the spaceport. There are only terrorists and soldiers that betrayed their oath. We have the right to destroy them by any means accessible to a superpower,' Bemish said.
