“You are indeed an honest captain,” murmured Ero, who patted his stack of documents. “If perhaps not always a wise one. We might have expected better from the captain of a ship of the line than your withdrawal at Ament Cour. What do you say to that, Captain Tephe.”
Tephe held himself very still. “I would say to you that we were engaged by three ships of equal strength to the Righteous, and at close quarters, and with a god who had lately brought us to Ament Cour and who was not at full strength, either to deflect attack or to aid us in escape,” he said. “Through the grace of Our Lord we were able to destroy one of those ships and disable a second, all the while drawing the ships away from the planet itself and giving the faithful there time to fortify themselves against attack, and to call for additional ships to defend them. We left Ament Cour space only when the Righteous’ wounds were too grave to sustain another attack, and even then our god had strength only to bring us as far as the outer planet in Ament Cour’s system. We hid in that planet’s rings, running dark and cold, until both ship and god were recovered well enough to travel once more.”
“You provide us with a rationalization for your failure,” Ero said.
“I provide you with an accounting, Eminence,” Tephe said. “I stand here for my choices and will suffer any judgment they provoke. I chose within my power the wisest course of action for my ship and for the people of Ament Cour. Perhaps another captain would have done other, and better. These were my choices.”
“Well said,” said Chawk. “And in all, well done. You defended your ship and the faithful as far as you were able, and better than most would have done. This is nevertheless of bitter comfort. Before more of our ships could drive off the one ship the Righteoushad been unable to defeat, it destroyed three cities on Ament Cour. Hundreds of thousands of souls lost in all.”
“They did not land troops?” Tephe said. “Nor raid the cities?”
“Such was not their goal,” Chawk said.
“What was their goal?” asked Tephe.
“Genocide!”
The word blasted from the third bishop, whom Tephe did not recognize. He did recognize the apprehension both Chawk and Ero formed on their faces when the third bishop spoke. Whomever he was, he outranked them both, and significantly.
“Yes, genocide,” continued the third bishop. “A systematic eradication of the faithful. Not to make it easier to steal things, or to barter hostages for money, or to loot and rape, but to destroy Our Lord by destroying that which sustains him!”
Tephe glanced toward Chawk, whom to him seemed the most sympathetic to him on the panel. “What sustains Our Lord, Bishop Major?” he asked.
“Faith sustains Him, Captain,” Chawk said, reprovingly. “As you must know from the commentaries.”
“ ‘For I am nourished by the faithful, and draw upon their celebration,’ ” quoted Tephe. “I know my commentaries well, Bishop Major.”
“Then it is perhaps that you do not understand them fully,” Chawk said. “When Our Lord speaks of being nourished by the faithful, He is not speaking in metaphor. Our faith sustains and strengthens Him, and gives Him the power to extend His grace to us, and to defeat and enslave His enemies, which in its turn allows us to travel the stars and find the space we need to increase our numbers and allow Him to grow more powerful and protect us further.”
“And so to destroy His faithful is to wound Him directly,” Tephe said.
“Even so,” Chawk said.
“This is not in the commentaries,” Tephe said.
“Our Lord is not a fool,” Ero said. “He does not reveal how He may be wounded.”
“Neither has a genocide been part of the tactics those outside Our Lord’s grace have used against Him or the faithful,” Tephe said. “This is neither in the commentaries nor in the military histories.”
The bishops were silent as Chawk and Ero looked toward the third bishop. He in turn moved his gaze to Tephe.
“Prostrate yourself,” he said to the captain.
Tephe fell to the floor, unquestioning.
“You are charged with silence,” proclaimed the third Bishop. “What is spoken to you here is not to be spoken again, on remit of your soul.” From the floor Tephe quaked; he knew this bishop was warning him that his soul would be consumed. “I charge you again with silence; and charge you a third time. You may rise.”
Tephe rose.
“You have not heard of genocidal tactics being used because they have not been used for thousands of years,” Bishop Ero said. “You know from the commentaries that in the Time Before, thousands of gods contested for the souls of the faithful and that Our Lord prevailed. What is not spoken of are the tactics these gods used in their attempts to diminish Him.”
“Genocide was used by some, then.” Tephe said.
“By all, good captain,” Ero said. “By every one. And yet Our Lord still prevailed, and in doing so enslaved hundreds of the gods who contested against Him, and diminished the others so greatly that His preeminence was uncontested. These gods exist now on the margins of His empire, with only enough faithful to nibble at His feast. The looting and hostage taking of which we earlier spoke.”
Tephe nodded. His earlier tours were a list of defenses against just such minor attacks and parries, and the goal in these engagements was twofold: to protect the faithful under attack and to capture rather than kill the gods who powered the enemy ships, so that they might be enslaved and thus used to increase the number of His ships.
“Captain, what happened at Ament Cour was not the first of its kind,” Ero said.
Tephe looked at the bishop, shocked. “Other genocides?”
“Ament Cour was the third in the last month,” Chawk said. “Smar and Breese also were attacked. Their cities and the faithful within were put to flame and fire. Millions of the faithful taken from the grace of Our Lord. It would have been as this at Ament Cour, save for your actions.”
“Many still died,” Tephe said.
“Yes,” Chawk said. “But many lived who would not have.”
“This is the first I have heard of these atrocities,” Tephe said.
“You are not the only faithful of late enjoined to silence,” said the third bishop.
“There was only one Gavril on Smar and on Breese allowed to speak beyond his own planet, as is so on every world,” Ero said. “All of their messages come through us, here. It is not difficult to keep a secret if we wish it so, and we have wished it.”
“It is not yet time to concern the faithful with this matter,” Chawk said. “We prefer at the moment to have them believe that these minor gods and their followers are yet looting and hostage taking.”
“With deference, your Eminences, this deception is not a thing which will long endure,” Tephe said. “These minor gods have gone from small incursions to wholesale slaughter of the faithful. This is not a change in survival tactics. This is a change in underlying intent. Something has changed to take them out of hiding and into bald and murderous assault.”
“Clever captain,” Ero said, after a moment.
“I am not clever, Eminence,” Tephe said. “I can read a map when it is laid out in front of me.”
“There is a new god,” Chawk said. “We do not know from whence it came. It has come to the edge of Our Lord’s dominion. Its strength is considerable. We believe its presence provokes these little gods to misbehavior.”
“They ally with it,” Tephe said.
“Gods do not ally,” growled the third bishop.
Tephe bowed his head, deeply. “With deference, bishop, if what I have heard here is correct, then these gods are acting in a manner that suggests coordination and an underlying strategy. It does suggest an alliance.”