Asodo Hatch ventured out of the Combat College with the intent of spreading the news of the opening of the Chasm Gates, but found there was no need for him to take any steps in that direction. In a city at peace, the news of the opening of the Chasm Gates might have taken a while to spread. But Dalar ken Halvar was a city poised for war, its leadership of the moment in nerve-edge readiness for trouble, its sentries posted, its couriers running messages routinely through the streets, its people acutely tuned to the faintest rumblings of the rumor-mill.
Consequently, the news of the reopening of the Chasm Gates struck with something of the swift-shock speed of news breaking in a high-tech inter-wired society. And Hatch very shortly returned to the Combat College to participate in a conference in Forum Three.
Given some of the murderous passions which were then unleashed, Hatch had cause to be very glad that the three people closest to his heart were safe in the illusion tanks, seated in the combat bays and walled in by unbreachable walls of kaleidoscope. Most murderously passionate of all people on that day was Lupus Lon Oliver.
When Lupus heard that Hatch was to be the Nexus-appointed ruler of Dalar ken Halvar, he was incensed. And when Lupus heard that the Nu-chala, the religious leader based on the holy planet of Borboth, had additionally appointed Hatch to be his deputy in Dalar ken Halvar, then Lupus was so enraged that he almost suffered a terminal melt-down.
'Nu-chala-nuth!' said Lupus, using that word as an obscenity.
'Are we to set the Yara free to rabble in their superstitions?'
'Twenty thousand years have not extinguished the power of the Nu-chala-nuth in the Nexus,' said Hatch. 'If we prosecute a pogrom against the Yara here in Dalar ken Halvar, then we will make problems for ourselves and for the whole of the Nexus. The Yara must be free to worship the Way if they so choose.'
So spoke Hatch, though the pogrom he feared was not a killing of the Yara but a killing of the Frangoni.
Lupus knew as much.
'You have the whip-hand for the moment,' said Lupus, in momentary concession, 'but don't think you can keep it forever.'
That of course was not the end of Lupus Lon Oliver's dissent.
When Startroopers and Combat Cadets – past and present – were packed into Forum Three and queued in the corridors outside, then Lupus made a strident effort to denounce and dethrone Asodo Hatch. Hatch was a barbarian, a murderer, a cheat, a fraud, a shyster. He was the son of a suicide. All this said Lupus, and more. But he was brought to order very quickly by General Dorth.
In Forum Three, the general gazed down on Lupus from the main display screen and said:
'Halt! Stop right there! I've heard enough out of you! I am General Dorth of the Nexus and I will not stand for this mutinous talk!'
The figure shown on the display screen, the putative General Dorth, was a big man in a uniform of gray trimmed with silver.
Whereas Paraban Senk had perfect voice control, General Dorth had to struggle from keeping his wrath from breaking into an upperoctave squawk. Hatch thought this was a nice touch of verisimilitude.
'Right now I am speaking by Instantaneous Transmission from Charabanc,' said General Dorth. 'But in ninety days, when quarantine ends, I will personally be coming to Olo Malan to take control of the planet. At that time I will be relieving Asodo Hatch, and if you fail to give him all due assistance in the meantime then you will personally answer to me for your delinquencies. Do you understand?'
'Yes,' said Lupus. 'Yes – yes sir.'
Lupus had the shaken aspect of a small child whose playtime games have abruptly been interrupted by the encroachments of fullgrown adults. The Ebrell Islander could not help but display a touch of fear, and this to Hatch confirmed the fact that Lupus was a True Believer. He believed the truth of this scenario absolutely.
'So I confirm the appointment of Asodo Hatch as military governor of – of Dara – ' Here Dorth broke off, glanced down, as if at a prompt screen hidden out of sight, then got it out and got it right: 'Of Dalar ken Halvar.'
'It is a great honor,' said Hatch stolidly, letting his rivals interpret that stolidness as they might.
'This is only a temporary measure,' said General Dorth. 'But the fact is that Asodo Hatch is the most senior officer of the Stormforce currently on Olo Malan. As for the rest of you, all Combat Cadets and Startroopers, past and present, you are all to present yourself for a midnight briefing in the Combat College – tonight. Meantime, here is a brief update of what has happened in the Nexus in the last twenty millennia | | '
By the time General Dorth was finished, Lupus Lon Oliver looked positively shellshocked, as well he might. But he was persuaded. The other Free Corps veterans were similarly persuaded.
And so it was that Asodo Hatch left Forum Three with half a hundred troopers of the Free Corps as his guard of honor. They filtered out through the lockway airlock, formed up in the kinema under the gaze of the Eye of Delusions, then set off down Scuffling Road.
Bodyguarding Asodo Hatch, the Free Corps troopers marched through Actus Dorum, marched past the Grand Arena, scaled the heights of Cap Ogo Blotch, and entered the palace of Na Sashimoko.
There in Hall in the heart of the Shrine of Shrines, Asodo Hatch seated himself upon the throne of the Empire of Greater Parengarenga, and declared himself emperor.
'The official title is, of course, military governor,' said Hatch. 'And I have no objection if members of the Free Corps and others choose to so call me. However, we must remember that the vast mass of the population of Parengarenga consists of ignorant peasants who know nothing of the Nexus, therefore it is fitting that I choose a title which fits their limited conception of the world.'
'What now?' said Lupus.
'I have much to do before I join you in the Combat College for the midnight briefing,' said Hatch. 'The first thing is the Treasurer. Berlin, that's the one. I appoint him my deputy. Bring him here.'
'But he's one of these – one of these savages!' protested Lupus. 'Your deputy, it – it should be a Free Corps appointment.'
'The Free Corps has the whole planet to think about,' said Hatch. 'The Free Corps are few and the needs of the moment are many. We can't have talented trained men wasting themselves on sorting out the petty bureaucracy of Dalar ken Halvar. Berlin's the man for that. He's not exactly my favorite person, but we can work together, at least in the short term. Lupus, it's hardly an appointment made to gratify my own heart, is it?'
That ended that argument, for it was common knowledge that Asodo Hatch did indeed have good reason to hate Nambasa Berlin, the noseless Treasurer who had ever maintained a gross prejudice against the 'purple filth' of the Frangoni rock – which prejudice was consequent upon the circumstances surrounding the loss of his nose.
Nambasa Berlin was brought from the closely-watched imprisonment in which he had been kept since being overthrown by a coup launched by Imperial Guards and Free Corps troopers. Berlin was briefed, and absorbed the news of the opening of the Chasm Gates with an uncommon degree of calm. But then – Berlin had been expecting to be executed, and in the face of death all lesser shocks lose their power to disconcert.
Thus it was that Hatch seized control, bloodlessly, and worked throughout the day to consolidate that control. He sought out people like Berlin who were competent, who were accustomed to the exercise of power, who knew their jobs and who were not aligned with the Free Corps. These Hatch placed in positions of trust, so by evening he had a skeleton administration in place.
Late at night, when he was sure that almost all the Free Corps people were safe within the Combat College – and soon to be sealed into that College and held there as prisoners – Asodo Hatch presided over a meeting of selected Frangoni in the palace of Na Sashimoko.
The meeting took place in Na Sashimoko's map room, where there was a big table on which it was possible to assemble largescale maps showing (or at least purporting to show) the geography of the entire empire. As wizards have a great love of maps, and as the Silver Emperor known to the world as Plandruk Qinplaqus had been a wizard of Ebber (and was a wizard of Ebber still, assuming that he still lived), a great deal of love had been spent on the elaborations of this map room. It had leather-upholstered seats sufficient for all the Frangoni who came to sit at that big table.
Hatch's elder brother Oboro Bakendra was at that meeting.
So was Son'sholoma Gezira, the apostate Frangoni who had once offended Hatch by accosting him on the Frangoni rock, and by asking him to assist in teaching the doctrines of Nu-chala-nuth.
