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“What’s just happened on Ferrix,” a male voice grinds out, “is like a serpent striking. A foul creature has uncoiled and bitten us. It sunk its fangs into our chest and injected its poison into our bloodstream. It is moving towards our heart. It has tainted us. It is attacking us. And now we need an antidote. Now we need to strike back.”
Yularen slams his clenched fist onto Partagaz’s desk. “And we will strike back. We’ll crush them. We’ll destroy them so they’ll never walk again.”
Partagaz doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t move a muscle.
He gives thanks that mind reading technology is still firmly on The Empire’s wish list and has not yet become a reality.
He doesn’t object to Yularen’s frothing-at-the-mouth tirade against the rioters on Ferrix. Because of course he doesn’t. The citizens of that planet are insects who’ve overexcited themselves at discovering a gap in the wall and now believe they can make a difference. They can’t. Well they can, but only in the negative sense for themselves.
He also doesn’t object to it because he has basic self-preservation skills. He enjoys his job and continuing good health, both mental and physical.
But he cannot in good conscience show his approval of Yularen’s speech, because that would indicate his approval of the analogy as well as the content. And he doesn’t approve of Yularen’s snake analogy. It’s flawed. It’s lazy. It’s so unoriginal that it’s actively starting to bore him.
Partagaz would have employed a different equivalence, no matter if he’d been delivering it to an audience of 1 or 1000. He’d say the events that happened on Ferrix were like a spike strip being deployed from a law enforcement vehicle designed to slow a speeding suspect down. The Ferrix crowd resembled a hive mind who drove one of those outdated mechanical cars with a combustion engine that still chug around some Wild Space backwaters. An unlicensed driver with a large ego and a lack of intelligence had convinced themselves their actions were right and just and would have no long-lasting negative consequences.
Powered by gas, hot and so very long compressed, an extendable tube had shot out of the crowd into the mass of Imperial officers. This spike-studded tool took control of the situation rapidly and violently. It disrupted the bad guys’ momentum and sent them stumbling, sent them careening, sent them to the ground. Because yes, we are the bad guys here. Didn’t you know that? Oh dear.
If one of his Supervisors or Attendants had used Yularen’s clunky serpent analogy, Partagaz would have given them some busy work poorly disguised as an assignment of middling importance. The only way to complete the assignment would be to read and understand multiple articles on history, biology and mythology. He’d remind them that snakes don’t walk. He’d explain the difference between poison and venom. He'd advise on choosing either the past or present tense and using them consistently.
But a subordinate is not expelling half digested words in such a way. His boss is.
Partagaz suppresses a wince.
He fails to suppress his headache. He’s had it for hours, and no treatment he’s taken has touched it.
Yularen paces and points and rumbles. He’d descended upon Partagaz’s office in what he thought was an unexpected visit. But Partagaz knew about the failure at Ferrix as soon as it happened, and the only unexpected behaviour from Yularen would have been if the Colonel hadn’t visited him in person as soon as possible to yell and apportion blame.
Partagaz stands at attention calmly: hands clasped behind his back, legs apart, shoulders back, head slightly raised, face a perfect study of expressionless concern. His eyes track Yularen’s pacing and gesticulations with greater precision than Black Ops radar.
Yularen stops pacing. He takes a breath. He puts his hands on his hips.
“Well?” he snaps.
Partagaz takes his time responding. It’s a pause calculated to give Yularen the impression that he’s so intimidating that any mortal man would be incapable of immediate speech.
“Ferrix has been neutralised,” Partagaz says carefully. “Our rapid response teams exceeded expectations. They subdued the rioters, evacuated our people, and arrested everyone else.”
He knows what Yularen’s going to say next.
“Yes I know that. But news of our defeat is spreading faster than fire!” Yularen yells, proving Partagaz right. If Partagaz was a gambling man, he’d have won a lot of money from himself.
Partagaz nods. This he openly agrees with.
Yularen actually growls. It’s a surprisingly impressive sound.
Yularen raises a threatening finger. “Don’t raise your eyebrows at me, Lio. I’m not in the mood for this. Not today.”
Eyebrow, Partagaz wants to correct him. Singular. But again, his health and excellent job.
“What action have you taken to contain it?” Yularen asks.
Now both of Partagaz’s eyebrows do rise. This is actually surprising. He didn’t think Yularen was so short-sighted and narrow-minded.
“I have taken none so far.”
“None?!”
Yularen slams his palm onto the desk. The impact makes a delicate porcelain cup rattle. Partagaz calculates that Yularen only needs to slam the desk twice more to make the cup topple off the edge of his desk. There’s no liquid left in the cup. But it will smash instantly upon hitting the ground. He’s exceedingly fond of that cup; he defeated a shadow strike force two decades ago to win it. If the cup dies, he’ll bury the shards. He won’t disrespect it with resurrection.
Yularen strides towards him. “What did you say?”
Partagaz fast forwards through the next few exchanges this conversation is fated to have. He’d like to catch Dr. Gorst before he leaves for the day and get something prescribed for his headache. He doesn’t have the energy to visit his usual practitioner tonight, and listen to her complain without taking a breath about her stable of animals and how they’re all expensive failures she didn’t sign up for when she married for a third time.
“The news is out,” Partagaz answers. “Any attempt to recall or deny it would be futile. It would make us look weak.”
“Weak?”
“And desperate.”
Yularen stares daggers at him. Partagaz looks blandly back. There are only three people in existence who can intimidate him, and they all know that a Death Glare isn’t the way to do it.
“If we try to claw it back, people will ask why,” Partagaz says.
“To which we’ll tell them it’s none of their business.”
“Which will make them ask harder. If we attempt to extinguish this one fire, all we’ll succeed in doing will be to spread the sparks. The harder we come down, the faster we’ll fan them.”
Yularen spins around. He slams the desk again.
One slam left.
Yularen puts both palms on the desk and braces himself. He looks down at the desk. He doesn’t let his head hang.
Partagaz hopes that Yularen is reluctantly accepting the truth of what he’s heard and is taking a moment to process it. And not that he’s summoning his anger and embarrassment into his hand, which he’ll use to sweep the cup off the desk. That brilliant cup deserves a better end.
Yularen straightens and turns around. His voice is tight. “So how would you put out this fire? This explosion of sparks that planet and its ‘people’ have vomited into space?”
Partagaz hasn’t moved. His voice remains calm. “Smother it.”
Yularen taps a finger against his thigh. He sighs with dark reluctance. “Go on.”
“If a fire cannot be extinguished by removing its fuel or heat source, we put a cage around it.”
“A cage?”
Not a literal one, Partagaz thinks. Because how would that work?
“What do you mean?” Yularen asks.
Partagaz’s temple throbs. “Imagine a spherical dome. An invisible one. We encircle what needs to be contained and flood the atmosphere with an oxygen suppressant of the verbal kind.”
To Yularen’s credit, he’s genuinely trying to understand. Partagaz enjoys a few seconds of petty pleasure in letting his boss struggle.
“We inject a powerful dose of anti-venom,” Partagaz explains. “We cripple them with words. We kill them by slow corrosion.”
Yularen squints at him. “I’m not going to ask you to explain yourself again. This isn’t a social get-together, Lio. This is open warfare. So speak plainly and stop wasting time.”
Partagaz squeezes his fingers together, hard. Even harder. As hard as he can bear it. A trickle of pain is forcibly funnelled from his head and diverted down to his fingertips.
“We re-calibrate the narrative,” Partagaz says flatly. “We alter the molecules. Like Chemists. News of a decisive victory against evil Imperial officials at an old woman’s funeral is out. And now it can be adjusted. And it will be adjusted based on truth. The Imperials on the ground at Ferrix did not throw the first brick. They did not start a riot. Terrorists did. A small group of violent criminals took disgusting advantage of the planet’s collective grief to further their own agenda. The Imperial contingent who were serving as peacekeepers were taken by complete surprise. No plans had been put in place to deal with a violent attack originating from the crowd.”
Yularen is nodding. His eyes are dark. “Not only did she fail to put a contingency plan in place, she didn’t plan well to begin with. Did she?”
There’s no need to specify who ‘she’ is.
“Imperial troops did not fire into the overwhelmingly law-abiding crowd,” Partagaz continues, as if Yularen hadn’t spoken. “Because why would they? They’re peace keepers. The terrorist faction took further advantage. Violence and disorder exploded with shocking speed. Multiple injuries occurred. But as peacekeepers, it was the soldiers’ duty to restore order. Which they did. A small band of criminals were quickly identified and rapidly detained. The entire episode lasted mere minutes.”
“It took us hours to force the lid half-way back onto Ferrix.”
Partagaz tilts his head. “Yes. But why would anyone believe otherwise? Because a handful of loud-mouths from an obscure planet only a minority of people can spell correctly says so? If we come down hard on their claims that they took us by surprise and landed a decisive blow on our power, we’ll be giving credence to it. But if we acknowledge that there was a small fracas – if we smile indulgently and shrug our shoulders and open the floor up for questioning – we give the impression that what happened is so inconsequential that it’s only worth a moment of our time.”
Yularen shakes his head. “You should be in Public Relations.”
Partagaz smiles. “Is that not where I am?”
Yularen takes a deep breath in. He sends a deep breath out.
“All right,” he says. “That approach could work.”
It will work, Partagaz thinks. Just don’t think too hard about it and ruin it with complex details. Don’t try too hard.
“I need to think carefully about this,” Yularen says. “I’ll put a committee together to workshop it. Then they’ll present their findings to an executive working group for review.”
Partagaz’s headache deepens. He’d commit a crime for a glass of water.
“On second thoughts,” Yularen says slowly, and darkly, as if he’s just coming up with this heel-turn, “I want you to put this plan together.”
Partagaz’s thirst recedes.
“You’ll work through the night. You’ll send me a report, a script for me to follow when meeting with the press, and key objectives before our emergency huddle meeting at six.”
Partagaz’s headache dissolves.
He has to pretend this is actually a punishment. If he accepts it completely, Yularen will be suspicious. If he objects too strongly, Yularen might take it away from him.
Partagaz makes a show of widening his eyes; of pursing his lips; of taking a deep breath of resignation.
“Yes sir,” he says. “May I bring on someone to assist me?”
“No-one Lieutenant rank or above,” Yularen says. “Which means she won’t be available.”
Partagaz bows his head. He’ll take away one of Dedra’s tiles and demote her to Attendant. Then she will be available. Because she needs to be punished. And more importantly, she needs to learn from her mistakes so that she doesn’t make them again. After they write Yularen’s words, and prepare the gas mixture to be injected throughout the sector, and Dedra’s presented him with the corrective action plan he knows she’s already writing for herself, he’ll hand her third square back. Yularen doesn’t need to be reminded that he invested Partagaz with the power to promote and demote ISB personnel.
“All that you requested will be on your desk before you arrive in the morning,” Partagaz says.
“It had better be,” Yularen says. He looks down at the desk. At the expensive and historical cup sitting so close to the edge of ruin. He stretches a finger towards it.
Partagaz holds his breath.
Yularen makes fingertip contact with the cup. He pauses. He thinks. He gently pushes it back towards the center of the desk. Away from the edge. Away from an ignoble crashing end.
Partagaz exhales slowly. He exhales silently. His palms are damp.
Yularen strides towards the office’s door, the meeting over.
“Good evening, sir,” Partagaz says pleasantly.
Yularen raises a hand in recognition and dismissal as he leaves.
Partagaz untangles his fingers and sits down at his desk. Shadows and bars of grey stretch across its surface. Coruscant’s manufactured light is increasing as its natural light dims. When both of these external sources of illumination cease to be fit for purpose, his office’s ceiling lights will automatically activate. They’ll blaze hot and white until dawn blisters up.
Partagaz spends some moments in silent contemplation. He watches an ash black shadow crawl across his desk. He hooks a finger into his cup’s handle and pulls it towards him, out of the shadow’s path. He runs a finger around its rim, anti-clockwise. And then clockwise. He mentally writes a first draft of the speech.
He puts his cup in a desk drawer and locks it. He sends a priority Alpha message to Dedra. He activates his office’s environmental control panel and brings up the illumination settings. He consults the time, and sees that he has fourteen minutes before the ceiling lights are activated. He has fourteen minutes of peaceful solitude in a pleasant blanket of soft natural light left.
He takes a deep breath in.
He holds it, and pays attention to it, and clears his mind of everything else. The ever increasing pressure in his lungs is pleasant because he controls when it ends.
He exhales.
He sits up straight. He stabs the control panel with a finger and activates his office’s fierce overhead illumination. Flattened suns of sodium scorch his sanctuary. Light floods his unblinking eyes and drills down his spine, it bucks up burning into his brain.
He didn't have to activate these pitiless lights ahead of schedule.
But he’s had enough discomfort imposed on him from above for one day.